(jr^ 


TRIUMPHS 


OP 


ENTERPRISE,  INGENUITY, 


AND 


PUBLIC  SPIRIT. 


BY    JAMES    PART  ON: 

AUTHOR  OF  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  AARON  BURR,  LIFE   OF  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN,  LIF1 

OF  ANDREW  JACKSON,  LIFE    OF    HORACE    GREELEY,  GENERAL   BUTLER 

IN     NEW     ORLEANS,      FAMOUS      AMERICANS     OF     RECENT 

TIMES,   PEOPLE'S  BOOK    OF    BIOGRAPHY,  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED. 


PUBLISHED    ONLY    BY    SUBSCRIPTION. 


NEW    YORK: 

VIRTUE  &   YORSTON,  12   DEY  STREET, 
CHICAGO:    M.  A.  PARKER  &   Co. 

1874. 


Entered,  according-  to  jSci  of  Congress,  in  the  year  18>7//.}  by 
Virtue  fy  Yorston,  in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of 
«  Congress,  at  Washing-ton. 


Anderson  &*  Ramsay,  Printers,  28  Frankfoi t  Street,  New   York. 


CONTENTS. 


i. 

THE  COOPER  INSTITUTE  AND  ITS  FOUNDER 28 

II. 
THE  WONDERFUL  GROWTH  OF  CHICAGO 35 

III.. 

DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTBUCTION  OF  CHICAGO, 79 

IV. 

THE  FOUNDER  OF  THE  VASSAR  COLLEGB        .       .        .       •        •         90 

V. 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES   ...         97 

VI. 
ORIGIN  OF  THE  ELECTRIC  TELEGRAPH 119 

VII. 

FROM  THE  CARPENTER'S  BENCH  TO  PRESIDENCY  OF  A  COLLEGE. 

A  SKETCH  OF  THE  CAREER  OF  JARED  SPARKS   ....        131 

VIII. 
HISTORY  OF  THE  SEWING-MACHINE 139 

IX. 
INVENTION  OF  CIRCULATING  LIBRARIES 177 

X. 

SOME  OF  THE  MARVELS  AND  CURIOSITIES  OF  PITTSBURGH    .        •        183 

XI. 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  COTTON-WEAVING  MACHINERY       ....       225 


MCG7937 


iy  COJ^TENTS. 

XII. 
JOHN  FlLLMORE  AND  HIS  VICTORY  OVER  THE  PlRATES  .  .  241 

XIII. 

SINGULAR  TRIUMPH  OF  RESOLUTION.    PAINTING  WITHOUT  HANDS       249 

XIV. 
ONE  OF  THE  HEROES  OF  LITERATURE:  THOMAS  HOOD  .       .       255 

XV. 
THE  FIRST  BOSTONIAN  AND  THE  FIRST  NEW-YORKER    .        .        .       267 

XVI. 

THE  FOUNDERS  OF  THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES: 

IRVING,  COOPER,  BRYANT 279 

XVII. 
Two  OF  OUR  BOHEMIANS  :  EDGAR  A.  POE  AND  ARTEMAS  WARD. 

How  THEY  LIVED,  AND  WHY  THEY  DIED  so  YOUNG      .        .       297 

XVIII. 
JOSIAH  QUINCY:  A  MODEL  GENTLEMAN  OF  THE  OLD  SCHOOL      .       311 

XIX. 
THE  PIANO  AMONG  us,  AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  INSTRUMENT 

FROM  THE  REMOTEST  TIMES 323 

XX. 

ANECDOTES  OF  FARADAY 353 

XXI. 

THOMAS  NAST 863 

i 

XXII. 

DAVID  CROCKETT:    A  SKETCH  OF  HIS  LIFE,  AND  ONE  OF  HIS  EX- 
PLOITS   '.       .        .        .        .        .        • 369 

XXIII. 
OIL  PAINTINGS  BY  MACHINERY 383 

XXIV. 
THE  FOUNDER  OF  THE  ROTHSCHILDS 4Q.r> 


CONTENTS. 
XXV- 


A     MlLLIONNAIRE  IN  THE  RANKS 


XXVI. 

How  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  LEARNED  TO  NOMINATE  PRESIDENTS         419 

XXVII. 
THE  FOUNDER  OP  THB  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENT  SYSTEM  OF  THE 

UNITED  STATES      .        .........        443 

XXVIII. 
UNROMANTIC    TRUTH.—  POCAHO  NT  AS  AND  HER  HUSBAND        .        .       4^1 

XXIX. 

INVENTION  OF  THE  COMPASS,  AND  WHO  FIRST  USED  IT          .        .        461 

XXX. 

DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ISLAND  OF  MADEIRA          .....        485 

XXXI. 

THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS      .......        511 

XXXII. 

THE  NAMING  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD  .......        533 

XXXIII. 

THE  WISEST  OF  THE  PAGANS,  AND  SOME  OF  HIS  THOUGHTS          .       541 

•  XXXIV. 

ARISTOTLE  :   HIS  KNOWLEDGE  AND  HIS  IGNORANCE        .        .       .       553 

XXXV. 

INVENTION  OF  THE  DAGUERROTYPE          ......        565 

XXXVI. 
JOHN  MACADAM          ..........        671 

XXXVII. 
WILLIAM  GED,  THE  FIRST  STEREOTYPER          .....        677 

XXXVIII. 
A  FRENCH  TORY:  PIERRE  ANTOIXE  BERRYER  .        .        685 


VI  CONTENTS. 

XXXIX. 

JOHN  ELIOT,  THB  APOSTLE  TO  THE  INDIANS          .....       593 

XL. 

LIFE,  TRIAL,  AND  EXECUTION  OF  ALGERNON  SIDNEY     ...        601 

XLI. 
THE  CITY  OF  ST.  Louis 615 

XLII. 
WHAT  SORT  OF  MAN  is  BISMARCK?  .        .        .  ,     .       .       .       .       649 

XLIII. 

PAINLESS  SURGERY  BY  ETHER          .        .        .        .       ,        .       .        659 

XLIV.      . 
BENJAMIN  THOMPSON,  alias  COUNT  RUMFORD  669 

XLV. 
CHABLES  DICKENS  AS  A  CITIZEN,  ......  67fl 


I 

PKEFATORY. 


As  the  publishers  of  this  volume  have  thought  proper  to  begin 
it  with  a  portrait  of  myself,  it  occurs  to  me  that  I  may  as  well 
open  my  part  of  it  by  relating  a  few  personal  reminiscences. 
Not  that  I  have  the  slightest  claim  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
'*  Triumphs,"  either  of  "  enterprise,  ingenuity,  or  public  spirit." 

This  article,  like  the  portrait,  is  preliminary  to  the  book,  rather 
than  a  portion  of  the  book  itself.  I  have  observed,  however, 
that  there  is  considerable  curiosity  in  the  minds  of  reading  people 
with  regard  to  the  ways  of  writers,  and  particularly  the  circum- 
stances of  their  introduction  to  a  literary  career.  This  curiosity 
is  at  least  harmless,  and  I  see  no  reason  why  it  should  not 
be  gratified. 

When  Charlotte  ^Bronte's  novel  of  Jane  Eyre  came  out, 
twentj^-two  years  ago,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  talk  in  the 
newspapers  and  in  society  upon  the  question,  Whether  the 
author  was  a  man  or  a  woman.  The  title-page  bore  the  name 
of  Currer  Bell,  which  was  invented  by  the  author  for  the  pur- 
pose of  concealing  her  sex.  But  sex  is  not  so  easy  to  conceal 
as  she  seems  to  have  supposed,  and  I  was  perfectly  certain 
myself,  as  every  attentive  reader  of  the  book  must  have  been, 
that  Currer  Bell  was  a  woman.  I  was  then  a  teacher,  and, 
like  most  teachers,  worked  very  hard  for  very  little  money. 
One  evening,  when  I  had  finished  the  labors  of  the  day,  I  sat 
down  in  my  exceedingly  small  room,  and  wrote  a  little  piece 
upon  this  vexed  question,  in  which  I  gave  my  reasons  for  sup- 
posing that  a  woman  had  written  Jane  Eyre,  the  most  popular 
novel  of  the  day.  I  took  a  world  of  pains  with  this  essay, 
and  when  I  had  finished  it,  about  midnight,  I  flattered  myself 


14  PREFATORY. 

that  I  had  produced  something  very  convincing  and  effective.  I 
folded  it  up  in  a  neat  packet,  and  wrote  upon  it  these  words : 
"N.  Parker  Willis,  Esq.,  Editor  of  the  Home  Journal." 

It  so  happened  that  I  used  to  pass  Mr,  Willis's  residence 
every  morning  on  my  way  to  school.  It  was  an  elegant  but 
rather  small  house  in  Fourth  Street,  near  Washington  Square, 
and  bore  upon  its  front  door  a  large  plate,  upon  which  was 
written  the  single  word,  "  Willis."  Having  had,  from  my  youth 
up,  the  greatest  interest  in  books,  and  the  people  who  wrote 
them,  I  had  never  passed  this  door  without  looking  at  it  with 
curious  eyes,  wondering  how  a  poet  looked,  and  how  he  was 
dressed,  and  what  he  had  in  his  parlor,  and  what  he  was  hav- 
ing for  breakfast.  Mr.  Willis's  position  then  in  literature  and 
journalism  was  very  different  from  what  it  was  afterwards,  when 
disease  had  injured  his  understanding,  and  almost  annihilated 
his  talent.  The  "  Home  Journal  "  was  then  taken  by  a  large  num- 
ber of  the  best  families  in  the  country,  and  it  was  reckoned  an 
honor  to  contribute  to  it.  It  really  had  some  excellent  quali- 
ties, and  was,  upon  the  whole,  an  entertaining  and  respectable 
periodical,  not  without  its  value  as  a  guide  to  the  public  taste. 

So,  the  next  morning,  instead  of  passing  this  door  as  usual,  I 
mustered  up  courage  to  go  up  to  it,  and  ring  the  bell.  The  bell 
was  answered  by  a  small  but  very  pretty  boy  in  gray  livery,  one 
of  those  minute  servants  who  used  to  be  styled,  in  France  and  Eng- 
land, tigers.  To  this  pleasing  youth  I  handed  my  packet,  and 
then  walked  rapidly  away  to  hide  a  blush.  I  had  not  gone  twenty 
steps  before  I  saw  this  transaction  in  a  very  disagreeable  light.  I 
felt  that  I  had  been  doing  a  very  foolish  thing  ;  that  neither  Mr. 
Willis  nor  the  public  needed  any  instruction  upon  the  authorship 
of  this  novel ;  and  that  if  I  could  only  get  my  essay  back  again, 
I  should  gladly  throw  it  into  the  fire.  However,  the  deed  was 
done,  and  the  consequences  must  be  borne. 

Not  being  aware  at  that  time  how  far  in  advance  of  their  date 
periodicals  are  manufactured,  I  opened  the  "  Home  Journal"  of  that 
very  week  with  eager  and  trembling  hands,  to  see  if  my  profound 
•discourse  upon  Jane  Eyre  had  appeared.  Of  course  ft  had  not. 


PREFATORY.  15 

The  "Home  Journal"  for  that  week  had  been  printed  several  days 
before  my  ingenious  essay  was  written.  By  this  time  my  faith  in 
the  aforesaid  disquisition  had  partially  revived  ;  so  that  when  I  saw 
that  it  was  not  printed,  I  experienced  a  ridiculous  mixture  of  dis- 
appointment and  relief.  When  the  next  number  appeared,  I  again 
seized  the  paper  with  eagerness,  and  rapidly  scanned  its  contents. 
No  essay  on  Jane  Eyre !  Then  I  gave  it  up,  wondering  how  I 
could  ever  have  been  so  foolish  as  to  write  on  such  a  subject,  or  to 
write  at  all  for  so  elegant  and  distinguished  a  periodical. 

But  I  was  not  to  escape  so  easily;  Four  or  five  weeks  after  I 
had  delivered  my  packet  to  the  pretty  little  tiger,  I  happened  to  be 
down  town  on  a  Saturday  morning,  and  bought  a  copy  of  the  "'  Home 
Journal "  at  a  bookstore  then  kept  under  the  Astor  House.  Before 
putting  the  paper  into  my  pocket,  I  gave  one  careless  glance  at 
the  clearly-printed,  handsome  first  page,  and  there,  behold,  my 
article  !  And  not  only  that,  but  before  it  were  a  few  lines  written 
by  Mr.  Willis  himself,  calling  attention  to  the  piece,  and  paying  a 
compliment  to  the  writer.  I  am  afraid  the  reader  will  think  me 
very  silly ;  but,  as  I  have  begun  this  story,  I  may  as  well  finish  it. 
The  sight  of  my  poor  little  essay,  so  fairly  printed  in  such  a  con- 
spicuous place  of  such  a  paper,  with  the  few  encouraging  words  of 
the  editor,  threw  me  into  a  perfect  ecstasy,  and  I  felt  that  I  must 
tell  some  one  of  my  good  fortune. 

The  nearest  person  at  hand  whom  I  knew  was  the  foreman  of  the 
"Tribune"  press-room.  To  his  excavation  in  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  I  directed  rapid  steps.  I  found  him  in  the  engine-room,  black 
from  head  to  foot,  from  an  exploration  he  had  just  been  making  of 
the  boiler,  which  needed  repairs.  His  mind  being  preoccupied 
with  this  important  duty,  he  was  in  no  mood  to  sympathize  with 
my  exultant  feelings.  Nevertheless,  he  gave  me  a  friendly  though 
very  evanescent  smile  ;  and  taking  the  clean  paper  which  I  pre- 
sented to  him  with  the  tip  of  his  intensely  black  thumb  and  finger, 
conveyed  it  to  his  desk,  assuring  me  that  he  would  read  it  with 
the  greatest  attention  by  and  by.  No  doubt  he  kept  his  word ; 
but  as  he  had  never  heard  of  Currer  Bell  or  her  novel,  I  am  afraid 
I  subjected  his  good  nature  to  a  test  too  severe. 


16  PREFATORY. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  my  writing  for  the  press.  The  ice 
being  now  broken,  I  did  not  fail  to  repeat  the  experiment ;  which, 
being  successful,  was  followed  by  a  third  venture ;  and  in  fact  I 
stopped  so  often  at  Mr.  Willis's  door,  to  intrust  a  package  of 
manuscript  to  the  little  tiger,  that  he  and  I  became  well  ac- 
quainted with  each  other,  without  ever  having  exchanged  a  sylla- 
ble. My  contributions,  I  should  add,  were  all  anonymous,  and 
were  written  without  the  slightest  expectation  of  any  reward, 
except  the  gratification  of  seeing  them  in  print.  After  some 
months,  a  friend  informed  me  that  Mr.  Willis  had  expressed  to 
him  some  little  curiosity  to  know  who  this  industrious  correspon- 
dent was,  that  kept  peppering  him  with  manuscript.  Duly  pro- 
vided with  a  note  of  introduction,  I  proceeded  to  gratify  his  curi- 
osity in  person. 

Neither  before  nor  since  have  I  ever  seen  small  parlors  so  full 
of  books,  nicknacks,  pictures,  and  curiosities,  as  those  into  which 
I  was  ushered,  on  a  certain  afternoon,  by  my  old  friend,  the  tiger 
in  gray ;  and  consequently  I  was  very  glad  that  Mr.  Willis  did  not 
immediately  present  himself,  for  his  delay  gave  me  an  opportunity 
to  look  over  a  large  book  of  autographs,  which  lay  open  upon  a 
table,  and  to  inspect  various  oddities  in  the  way  of  decoration  and 
furniture  with  which  the  rooms  abounded. 

Enter,  the  poet !  He  was  forty-two  years  of  age  then,  a  tall, 
well-formed,  elegant-looking  man,  with  an  abundance  of  reddish, 
curly  hair,  brushed  well  off  his  forehead.  He  wore  an  extremely 
peculiar  jacket,  which  he  said  he  had  brought  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean, where  it  was  called  a  Cossair  jacket,  —  a  remarkably  pretty 
garment,  of  dark  blue  and  white  stripes.  Altogether,  there  was  that 
graceful  and  romantic  something  in  his  appearance,  which  was  in 
keeping  with  his  writings  and  his  position.  Interesting  as  his 
appearance  was,  his  face  would  hardly  bear  a  close  inspection. 
His  eyes  were  small  and  insignificant, 'the  blue  being  pale  and 
"  washed  out."  His  nose  also  was  small,  and  slightly  turned  up. 
He  looked,  however,  the  gentleman  and  the  man  of  letters  to  per- 
fection, and  he  received  the  verdant  individual  before  him  with 
that  ease  of  the  man  of  the  world  which  immediately  puts  a  guest 


PREFATORY.  17 

at  ease.  I  remember  little  of  the  conversation,  except  that  he 
praised  my  articles,  and  advised  me  to  go  on  writing.  He  said  it 
was  not  the  custom  for  the  "  Home  Journal"  to  pay  for  contributions 
in  any  other  coin  than  the  honor  it  might  confer,  and  the  introduc- 
tion it  could  give  to  a  literary  career.  And  so  I  went  on  writing, 
perfectly  satisfied  with  the  pleasure  of  so  doing ;  but  not  ill  pleased, 
now  and  then,  to  receive  from  Mr.  Willis  a  package  of  concert 
tickets,  or  cards  of  admission  to  a  ball  or  picture  gallery. 

At  this  time  Mr.  Willis  was  already  afflicted  with  that  mysterious 
disease  (epilepsy)  from  which  he  suffered  during  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life,  and  which  so  impaired  his  mental  powers,  that 
his  latest  writings  showed  scarcely  a  gleam  of  the  sparkling  tal- 
ent he  had  once  possessed.  It  was  during  one  of  his  frequent 
periods  of  ill  health,  that  I  became  his  assistant  in  editing  the 
paper,  an  employment  in  which  I  continued  for  two  or  three 
years.  No  man  could  be  more  considerate  either  of  the 
feelings  or  the  rights  of  a  subordinate  than  he  was.  In  my  zeal 
and  ignorance  I  made  many  mistakes,  some  of  which  were  absurd 
and  ludicrous ;  but  he  was  always  disposed  to  make  light  of  hon- 
est blunders,  and  was  prompt  in  bestowing  praise  when  I  had 
done  anything  a  little  better  than  usual. 

Of  all  the  literary  men  whom  I  have  ever  known,  N.  P.  Willis 
was  the  one  who  took  the  most  pains  with  his  work.  It  was  no 
very  uncommon  thing  for  him  to  toil  over  a  sentence  for  an  hour  ; 
and  I  knew  him  one  evening  to  write  and  rewrite  a  sentence  for 
two  hours  before  he  had  got  it  to  his  mind ;  and  then  he  had 
made  the  wit  of  it  so  abstrusely  refined  and  complicated,  that  I 
presume  many  readers  missed  the  point  after  all.  Four  or  five 
pages  of  foolscap  was  with  him  a  good  morning's  work ;  and  it 
sometimes  happened  that  these  pages  contained  so  many  erasures 
that  they  would  not  make  half  a  column  in  the  paper.  There 
was  nothing  he  abhorred  so  much  in  composition  as  those  faults 
which  come  of  writing  too  rapidly  and  too  much.  I  can  say 
truly  of  him,  that  in  his  art  as  a  journalist  he  was  conscientious. 
lie  did  the  very  best  he  could  every  time  he  put  pen  to  paper.'  Yet 
his  talent  was  so  decided,  that  he  could  hardly  write  the  most 


18  PREFATORY. 

trifling  note,  without  putting  in  it  some  happy  turn,  some  unex- 
pected play  upon  a  word,  which  gave  the  note  a  certain  literary 
value. 

To  this  I  will  add  one  remark  more.  He  once  had  occasion  to 
say  to  the  public,  that  since  his  first  marriage  his  "  moral  con- 
duct had  been  irreproachable."  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt 
that  he  told  the  truth.  Faults  he  had,  as  we  all  have,  and  some 
of  those  faults  were  serious  defects  of  character  ;  but  with  regard 
to  the  particular  class  of  offences  to  which  he  referred  in  the  lan- 
guage just  quoted,  I  do  not  believe  the  person  lived  who  could 
justly  accuse  him. 

Among  the  great  masses  of  manuscript  which  the  mail  brought 
every  day  to  the  office  of  the  "  Home  Journal,"  there  came,  one  mor- 
ning, a  singularly  interesting  narrative  concerning  the  youth  and 
apprenticeship  of  Horace  Greeley,  written  by  the  gentleman  to 
whom  he  had  been  apprenticed,  Mr.  Amos  Bliss,  of  East  Poultney, 
Vermont.  The  "  Tribune  "  had  then  been  in  existence  about  eleven 
years ;  and  although  I  had  never  seen  the  editor,  I  had  become 
warmly  attached  tq  him.  I  admired  him  for  one  thing  above  all 
others, — his  advocacy  of  the  rights  of  working  men,  and  the  heart- 
felt interest  he  manifested  in  their  welfare  and  dignity.  Often, 
when  a  working  man  rises  from  the  ranks,  and  becomes  himself 
an  employer  of  working  men,  he  forgets  the  companions  of  his 
earlier  years,  and  would  gladly  have  others  forget  that  he  was  ever 
connected  with  them. 

From  this  poor  foible  of  human  nature  the  editor  of  the  "  Tribune" 
seemed  to  be  wholly  free.  He  appeared  to  be  as  solicitous  for  the 
honor  and  prosperity  of  mechanics,  as  when  he  had  worked  with 
them  side  by  side,  and  sat  at  table  with  them  day  by  day.  It  was 
for  this  that  I  honored  the  editor  of  the  "Tribune"  above  all  other 
men  then  living  on  this  continent ;  and  hence  it  was  that  I  read 
with  so  much  pleasure  the  narrative  of  his  youthful  days,  contrib- 
uted to  the  "  Home  Journal"  by  Amos  Bliss.  , 

The  article  told  how  a  tall  and  gawky  boy,  in  the  roughest  coun- 
try clothes,  had  come  to  Mr.  Bliss,  as  he  was  hoeing  in  his  garden, 
and  asked  if  he  was  the  man  that  carried  on  the  printing-office  ; 


PKEFATOKY.  19 

and  how  Mr.  Bliss,  amused  at  first  at  the  oddity  of  his  dress  and 
demeanor,  had  gradually  discovered  that  the  lad's  head  was  full -of 
all  kinds  of  interesting  knowledge,  and  that  he  was  just  the  boy 
he  wanted  for  his  printing-office.  The  narrative  appeared  in  the 
"  Home  Journal,"  with  comments  by  Mr.  Willis,  and  attracted 
much  attention  throughout  the  country. 

Several  months  after,  when  I  was  dining  at  the  famous  old  res- 
taurant of  Dietz,  in  Barclay  Street,  where  dinners  were  served 
exactly  as  they  were  served  in  Berlin,  I  happened  to  sit  near  a 
group  of  publishers,  chief  among  whom  were  the  Brothers  Mason, 
who  have  since  been  so  universally  known  in  connection  with  the 
cabinet  organ.  At  that  time  they  were  among  the  most  enterpris- 
ing and  ambitious  of  publishers,  always  on  the  lookout  for  some- 
thing that  would  be  likely  to  please  our  sovereign  lord,  the  Pub- 
lic. After  some  conversation  on  books,  successful  and  unsuccess- 
ful, I  happened  to  say,  — 

"What  an  interesting  book  the  Life  of  Horace  Greeley  would 
make,  if  the  facts  could  only  be  ascertained ! " 

I  made  this  observation  without  the  slightest  thought  of 
attempting  such  a  work,  or  even  supposing  that  it  could  be  exe- 
cuted in  the  lifetime  of  the  subject.  I  merely  remembered  Mr. 
Bliss's  graphic  and  entertaining  narrative,  the  substance  of  which 
I  repeated  to  the  company,  concluding  with  a  remark  like  this :  — 

"  No  doubt  there  are  fifty  other  anecdotes  and  scenes  of  Hor- 
ace Greeley's  early  life,  quite  as  interesting  as  these,  only  they 
have  never  been  written  out.  If  any  one  could  go  to  Vermont 
and  New  Hampshire,  and  gather  them  up,  going  from  house  to 
house,  and  getting  them  from  the  lips  of  living  persons,  the  whole 
story  would  be  as  interesting  as  Franklin's  autobiography." 

After  dinner,  we  went  our  several  ways,  and  I  thought  no 
more  of  the  matter  for  many  weeks.  I  was  exceedingly  surprised, 
one  day,  upon  meeting  one  of  the  brothers  in  the  street,  to  receive 
a  proposition  for  the  production  of  such  a  work  as  I  had  described. 
It  seemed,  at  first,  too  ridiculous  to  be  entertained  ;  but,  on  further 
reflection,  I  said  I  would  attempt  it,  provided  Mr.  Greeley  himself 
had  no  objection,  and  would  give  me  the  names  and  residences  of 


20  PREFATORY. 

the  people  who  had  familiarly  known  him  from  early  life  to  the 
opening  of  his  public  career. 

Late  one  afternoon,  I  found  the  editor  standing  at  his  desk  in 
the  dismal "  Tribune"  editorial  rooms  of  that  day,  writing  with  his 
usual  velocity.  For  some  time  after  I  entered,  I  stood  waiting  for 
him  to  cease,  or  to  give  some  token  that  he  recognized  my  presence. 
He  continued,  however,  to  scribble  with  all  his  might,  until  I 
addressed  him,  and  asked  when  he  would  be  at  leisure  to  listen  to 
what  I  had  to  say.  He  remarked  that  leisure  was  a  commodity 
with  which  he  had  no  acquaintance.  He  had  had  none  of  it  for 
years,  and  did  n't  think  he  should  ever  have  any  more,  but  that  he 
would  listen,  then  and  there,  to  whatever  I  had  to  offer.  As  he 
had  already  received  an  intimation  of  the  scheme,  and  expressed 
no  repugnance  to  it,  I  had  only  to  make  known  my  name  in  order 
to  explain  my  business.  He  said  again,  that  he  had  no  leisure  and 
could  do  nothing  to  assist  the  project,  unless,  perhaps,  occasionally 
on  Saturday  nights,  when  he  had  a  reception  at  his  house.  I  told 
him  that  all  I  wished,  at  present,  was  the  names  and  residences  of 
the  persons  who  had  known  him  best  from  his  childhood  up. 

Instantly  —  before  I  could  get  my  pencil  out  of  my  pocket  —  he 
began  to  give  me  the  names  desired.  In  the  course  of  ten  minutes, 
I  had  a  long  catalogue  written  down.  Soon  after,  I  made  a  tour  of  two 
months  in  New  Hampshire,  Vermont,  New  York,  and  Pennsylvania, 
collecting  the  anecdotes  and  incidents  which  are  recorded  in  the 
early  chapters  of  my  life  of  Horace  Greeley.  On  returning  to  New 
York  I  bought  a  complete  file  of  the  "  Tribune  "  for  the  twelve  years 
of  its  existence,  and  borrowed  sets  of  the  "  Jeffersonian,"  "  New 
Yorker,"  and  "  Log  Cabin."  Every  number  of  these  journals  I 
closely  examined,  and  extracted  from  each  every  lurking  atom  .of 
biography  which  it  may  have  contained.  It  took  me  six  weeks  to 
do  it.  Eleven  months  after  I  entered  upon  the  work,  the  manuscript 
was  ready  for  the  printer.  Before  the  day  of  publication  —  such 
was  the  curiosity  of  the  public  concerning  the  foremost  editor  of 
the  day  —  seven  thousand  copies  of  the  work  were  ordered,  and 
in  the  course  of  the  first  few  months,  about  thirty  thousand  were 
sold ;  which,  for  that  day,  was  a  considerable  success. 


PREFATORY.  21 

All  this  train  of  events  began  with  my  placing  that  first  packet 
of  manuscript  in  the  hands  of  the  little  tiger  in  gray  at  Mr.  Willis's 
front-door. 

Concerning  the  present  volume,  I  will  only  observe,  that  it  is  the 
result  of  many  thousand  hours  of  labor,  and  many  thousand  miles 
of  travel ;  and  that  it  seems  to  myself  to  be  more  compact  with 
interesting  and  suggestive  information  than  any  other  which  I 
have  offered  to  the  public. 


OOOPKB   I  NSTIT  UTE. 


THE 

COOPER  INSTITUTE  AND  ITS  FOUNDER. 


EIGHTY  years  ago,  in  Water  Street,  New  York,  not  far 
from  the  wharves,  there  was  a  small  manufactory  of  hats, 
with  a  hat  store  in  front,  kept  by  a  person  who  was  some- 
times styled  by  his  neighbors  Captain  Cooper.  He  had 
indeed  served  in  the  ^Revolutionary  war ;  had  taken  part  in 
some  noted  operations ;  and,  at  the  conclusion  of  peace,  had 
retired  from  the  service  with  the  rank  of  Captain.  He  was 
not  formed  to  achieve  success  in  civil  life,  for  he  lacked 
perseverance.  He  was  better  at  forming  a  scheme  than 
at  carrying  it  out ;  and  the  consequence  was,  that,  after  a 
struggle  of  ten  years,  he  was  still  but  a  poor  hatter  in 
Water  Street,  with  a  large  and  rapidly  increasing  family. 

Like  many  other  amiable,  inefficient  men,  he  had  had  the 
luck  to  marry  a  woman  singularly  fitted  to  be  the  main-stay  of 
a  family  having  an  incompetent  head.  The  daughter  of  a 
former  Mayor  of  New  York,  who  had  served  in  important 
positions  during  the  Kevolution,  she  had  been  reared  and 
educated  among  the  Moravians  in  Pennsylvania,  who  had  so 
nourished  and  strengthened  her  moral  nature  as  to  render 
her  a  rare  blending  of  sweetness  and  fire,  of  efficiency  and 
tenderness,  —  a  lovely,  noble  creature,  who  has  transmitted 
a  vivid  tradition  of  her  excellent  qualities  to  the  third 
generation  of  her  descendants. 

Seven  sons  and  two  daughters  were  born  to  this  couple. 
Their  fifth  child  was  Peter  Cooper,  who  has  been  for  so  many 

2 


24  TRIUMPHS   OP   ENTERPRISE. 

years  past,  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  Manhattan  Island,  the 
one  most  honored  and  beloved.  He  was  born  in  1791. 

The  father's  necessities  compelling  him  to  employ  his  chil- 
dren in  his  business,  the  earliest  recollection  of  this  son  is 
of  pulling  and  picking  wool  for  hat  bodies.  He  was  kept  at 
work,  assisting  his  father,  all  his  boyhood,  except  that  dur- 
ing one  year  he  attended  school  half  of  every  day,  when  he 
learned  reading,  writing,  and  a  little  arithmetic.  Before  his 
father  left  the  hat  business,  Peter  learned  to  make  a  hat 
throughout;  and  when  afterwards  his  father  removed  to 
Peekskill,  and  set  up  a  brewery,  he  learned  every  branch  of 
that  business  also ;  for,  from  childhood,  he  was  quick  to 
learn,  dexterous  in  handling  tools,  and  much  given  to  in- 
venting improved  methods  and  implements. 

At  seventeen,  not  relishing  the  idea  of  spending  his  life 
in  brewing  beer,  he  came,  with  his  father's  consent,  to  New 
York,  intending  to  put  himself  apprentice  to  any  trade  that 
he  should  fancy,  after  looking  about  among  the  workshops 
of  the  city.  After  wandering  for  some  days  without  finding 
a  shop  that  he  liked,  and  that  also  wanted  a  boy,  he  went 
into  a  carriage  factory,  near  the  corner  of  Chambers  Street 
and  Broadway,  and  asked  one  of  the  partners  if  he  had  room 
for  an  apprentice. 

"Do  you  know  anything  about  the  business ? "  asked  the 
master. 

He  did  not. 

"  Have  you  been  brought  up  to  work  ?  " 

He  had,  most  decidedly ;  he  had  learned  to  make  hats  and 
to  brew  beer. 

"  Is  your  father  willing  you  should  learn  this  trade  ?  " 

"  He  has  given  me  my  choice  of  trades." 

"  If  I  take  you,  will  you  stay  with  me  and  work  out  your 
time?" 


COOPER  INSTITUTE   AND  ITS   FOUNDER.  25 

He  promised  so  to  do.  The  bargain  was  struck,  —  four 
years'  service,  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  year  and  his  board. 
In  those  cheap,  simple  times,  a  careful  boy,  with  a  little  help 
from  his  mother  or  sisters,  could  clothe  himself  for  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  year,  and  have  a  pretty  good  suit  of  clothes  for 
Sunday.  In  busy  seasons,  this  apprentice,  by  working  over 
time,  earned  extra  wages,  most  of  which  he  sent  to  his 
father,  but  a  part  of  which  he  kept  for  another  purpose. 

He  painfully  felt  his  ignorance.  He  had  an  energetic, 
inquisitive,  inventive  mind,  which  craved  knowledge  as  a 
hungry  man  craves  food.  He  bought  some  books,  but  a  lad 
unaccustomed  to  handle  books  is  apt  at  first  to  be  more  per- 
plexed than  assisted  by  them ;  and  so  he  looked  about  him 
for  some  kind  of  evening  school  where  he  could  have  the 
help  of  the  living  teacher.  In  all  New  York  there  was  then 
no  such  thing.  There  were  no  free  schools  of  any  kind,  and 
no  means  of  instruction  for  lads  who,  like  himself,  had  to 
work  all  day  for  their  livelihood.  He  hired  a  teacher  for  a 
while  to  help  him  in  the  evening,  and  he  thus  increased  his 
knowledge  of  arithmetic,  and  gained  a  little  insight  into 
other  branches. 

It  was  then,  when  he  was  a  poor  apprentice  boy,  thirsting 
for  knowledge  and  unable  to  obtain  it,  that  he  formed  a 
memorable  resolution. 

"  If,"  said  he  to  himself,  "  I  ever  prosper  in  business,  and 
acquire  more  property  than  I  need,  I  will  try  to  found  an 
institution  in  the  city  of  New  York,  wherein  apprentice  boys 
and  young  mechanics  shall  have  a  chance  to  get  knowledge 
in  the  evening." 

This  purpose  was  distinctly  formed  in  his  mind  before  he 
was  of  age,  and  he  kept  it  steadily  in  view  for  forty  years, 
before  he  was  able  to  accomplish  it. 

When  he  was  out  of  his  time,  his  employers  offered  to 


26  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

help  him  into  business  for  himself,  but  he  declined  the  offer 
from  the  natural  dread  which  such  men  have  of  getting  into 
debt.  And  fortunate  it  was  for  him  that  he  did  decline  it ; 
for,  a  few  months  after,  the  war  of  1812  broke  out,  which 
would  certainly  have  proved  ruinous  to  the  business  of  a 
young  carriage-maker  without  capital.  The  war,  however, 
was  the  beginning  of  his  fortune.  The  supply  of  foreign 
merchandise  being  cut  off,  a  great  impulse  was  given  to 
manufactures.  Cloth,  for  example,  rose  to  such  an  extrav- 
agant price  that  cloth  factories  sprang  up  everywhere,  and 
there  was  a  sudden  demand  for  every  description  of  cloth- 
making  machinery.  Peter  Cooper,  who  possessed  a  fine 
genius  for  invention,  invented  a  machine  for  shearing  the 
nap  from  the  surface  of  cloth.  It  answered  its  purpose 
well,  and  he  sold  it  without  delay  to  good  advantage.  Then 
he  made  another ;  and  as  often  as  he  had  one  done,  he  would 
go  to  some  cloth  mill,  explain  its  merits,  and  sell  it.  He 
soon  had  a  thriving  shop,  where  he  employed  several  menr 
and  he  sold  his  machines  faster  than  he  could  make  them. 

In  1814,  before  the  war  ended,  he  contracted  that  exqui- 
site marriage  which  gave  him  fifty-five  years  of  domestic 
happiness,  as  complete,  as  unalloyed,  as  mortals  can  ever 
hope  to  enjoy.  It  is  believed  by  members  of  his  family 
that  during  that  long  period  of  time  there  was  never  an  act 
done  or  a  word  spoken  by  either  of  them  which  gave  pain  to* 
the  other.  They  began  their  married  life  on  a  humble  scale 
indeed.  When  a  cradle  became  necessary,  and  he  was  called 
upon  to  rock  "it  oftener  than  was  convenient,  he  invented  a 
self-rocking  cradle,  with  a  fan  attachment,  which  he  patented r 
and  sold  the  patent  for  a  small  sum. 

The  peace  of  1815  ruined  his  business  ;  for  no  more  cloth 
could  be  manufactured  at  a  profit  in  America.  He  tried 
cabinet-making  for  a  while.  Then  he  went  far  up  town  and 


COOPER  INSTITUTE   AND  ITS   FOUNDEB.  27 

bought  out  a  grocery  store  on  the  site  of  the  Cooper  Insti- 
tute, which  even  then  he  thought  would  become  by  and  by 
the  best  place  in  the  city  for  the  evening  school  which  he 
hoped  one  day  to  establish.  It  was  where  the  Bowery 
terminated  by  dividing  into  two  forks,  one  of  which  was  the 
old  Boston  road,  now  called  the  Third  Avenue,  and  the 
other  was  the  Middle  road,  now  called  the  Fourth  Avenue. 
He  thought  that  by  the  time  —  a  far-distant  time  —  he  was 
ready  to  begin  his  school,  those  vacant  fields  around  him 
would  be  built  over,  and  that  that  angle  would  be  not  far 
from  the  centre  of  the  town. 

The  grocery  store  prospered.  But  he  was  not  destined 
to  pass  his  life  as  a  grocer.  One  day,  when  he  had  been 
about  a  year  in  the  business,  as  he  was  standing  in  the  door 
of  his  shop,  a  wagon  drove  up,  from  which  an  old  acquaint- 
ance sprang  to  the  sidewalk. 

"I  have  been  building,"  said  the  new-comer,  after  the 
usual  salutations,  wa  glue  factory  for  my  son;  but  I  don't 
think  that  either  he  or  I  can  make  it  pay.  But  you  are  the 
very  man." 

"  Where  is  it  ?  "  asked  the  young  grocer. 

It  was  on  what  we  should  now  call  the  corner  of  Madison 
Avenue  and  Twenty-ninth  Street,  the  present  centre  of  ele- 
gance and  fashion  in  New  York. 

"I '11  go  and  see  it." 

He  got  into  the  wagon  with  his  friend,  and  they  drove  to 
the  spot.  He  liked  the  prospect.  All  the  best  glue  was 
then  imported  from  Russia,  the  American  glue  being  of  the 
most  inferior  quality,  and  bringing  only  one  fourth  the  price 
of  the  imported  article.  He  saw  no  reason  why  as  good 
glue  could  not  be  made  in  New  York  as  in  Russia,  and  he 
determined  to  try.  The  price  was  two  thousand  dollars. 
It  so  happened  that  he  possessed  exactly  that  sum,  over  and 


28  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

above  the  capital  invested  in  his  grocery  business.  He  con- 
cluded the  bargain  on  the  spot,  sold  out  his  grocery  forth- 
with, and  began  to  make  glue. 

Now  followed  thirty  years  of  steady  hard  work.  He 
learned  how  to  make  the  best  glue  that  ever  was  made  in 
the  world,  and  it  brought  the  highest  price.  For  twenty 
years  he  had  no  book-keeper,  no  clerk,  no  salesman,  no 
agent.  He  was  up  at  the  dawn  of  day.  He  lighted  the 
factory  fires,  so  as  to  be  ready  for  the  men  at  seven  o'clock. 
He  boiled  his  own  glue.  At  mid-day  he  drove  into  town  in 
his  wagon,  called  upon  his  customers,  and  sold  them  glue 
and  isinglass.  At  home  in  the  evening,  posting  his  books 
and  reading  to  his  family. 

Such  was  his  life  for  thirty  years,  his  business  producing 
him  thirty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  a  large  portion  of  which 
he  saved,  always  thinking  and  often  talking  of  the  institu- 
tion which  he  hoped  to  found.  Glue  is  made  from  bullocks' 
feet,  and  for  many  years  he  consumed  in  his  glue  factory  all 
the  feet  which  the  city  yielded,  and  saw  the  price  gradually 
rise  from  one  cent  to  twelve  cents  per  foot. 

When  he  had  become  a  capitalist,  he  embarked  in  other 
enterprises,  and  made  many  inventions,  some  of  which  have 
since  proved  profitable,  though  for  a  long  time  they  were  a 
heavy  charge  upon  his  resources,  and  retarded  the  execution 
of  his  favorite  scheme.  It  was  at  Peter  Cooper's  iron  works 
in  Baltimore,  that  the  first  locomotive  was  made  ever  em- 
ployed in  drawing  passengers  on  the  Western  Continent; 
and  it  was  in  Peter  Cooper's  ingenious  brain  that  the  idea 
originated  of  using  iron  for  the  beams  and  girders  of  houses. 

After  forty  years  of  active  and  successful  business  life,  he 
found  himself  able  to  begin  the  execution  of  the  project 
formed  when  he  was  a  New  York  apprentice  boy. 

At  the  head  of  the  famous  street  called  the  Bowery,  in 


COOPER  INSTITUTE   AND   ITS  FOUNDER.  29 

the  city  of  New  York,  stands  the  lofty  edifice  of  brown  stone 
which  is  known  throughout  the  country  as  the  Cooper  Insti- 
tute. There  is  a  little  park  in  front  of  it ;  and,  standing 
unconnected  with  other  buildings,  at  the  point  where  the 
Bowery  divides  into  two  avenues,  it  makes  a  noble  termina- 
tion to  the  broadest  and  not  least  imposing  of  our  streets. 
The  ground  floor  of  the  building  is  occupied  by  showy 
stores,  and  the  second  story  by  the  offices  of  various  public 
institutions,  the  rents  of  which,  amounting  to  about  thirty- 
five  thousand  dollars  a  year,  are  the  fund  which  supports  the 
institution. 

Under  ground  is  a  vast  cavern-like  lecture  room,  in  which 
political  meetings  are  held,  and  where  courses  of  popular 
lectures  are  delivered  upon  Art  and  Science.  In  the  third 
story  there  is  an  extensive  reading-room,  furnished  with 
long  tables  and  newspaper  stands,  wherein  the  visitor  has 
his  choice  of  about  three  hundred  journals  and  periodicals 
from  all  parts  of  the  world. 

This  room  is  not  much  frequented  in  the  daytime  ;  but  in 
the  evening  every  seat  is  filled,  and  every  stand  is  occupied 
by  persons,  well  dressed  and  polite  indeed,  who  observe  the 
strictest  order,  and  yet  have  evidently  labored  all  day  as 
clerks,  mechanics,  or  apprentices.  Several  ladies  are  gener- 
ally present,  reading  the  magazines ;  for  this  apartment  is 
free  to  all,  of  every  age,  sex,  condition,  and  color,  provided 
only  that  they  are  cleanly  dressed  and  well  behaved.  On  a 
platform  at  one  end  of  the  room  a  young  lady  sits,  the  libra- 
rian, who  exercises  all  the  authority  that  is  ever  needed. 
The  most  perfect  order  prevails  at  all  times,  and  no  sound 
is  heard  except  the  rustling  of  leaves.  In  all  the  city  of 
New  York,  a  more  pleasing  spectacle  cannot  be  found  than 
is  exhibited  in  this  spacious,  lofty,  and  brilliantly  lighted 
room,  with  its  long  tables  bordered  on  both  sides  by  silent 


30  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

readers,  presided  over  by  a  lady  quietly  plying  her  crochet 
needle. 

If  you  ascend  to  the  stories  above,  you  behold  scenes  not 
less  interesting.  The  upper  stories  are  divided  into  class- 
rooms and  lecture-rooms.  In  one,  you  may  see  fifty  or  sixty 
lads  and  lasses  listening  to  a  lecture  upon  Chemistry,  illus- 
trated by  experiments.  In  another,  a  similar  class  is  wit- 
nessing an  exposition  of  the  Electric  Telegraph.  In  another 
apartment  there  will  be  a  hundred  pupils  seated  at  long 
tables,  drawing  from  objects  or  copies ;  and  in  another,  a 
smaller  class  is  drawing  a  statue,  or  a  living  object,  placed 
in  the  centre  of  the  room.  Drawing,  indeed,  would  appear 
to  be  a  favorite  branch  with  the  frequenters  of  this  establish- 
ment, nearly  all  of  whom  are  engaged  in  some  mechanical 
business  which  drawing  facilitates.  Young  machinists  and 
engineers,  young  carpenters  and  masons,  who  hope  one  day 
to  be  builders  and  architects,  young  carriage-makers,  uphol- 
sterers, and  house  painters,  who  aspire  to  exercise  the  higher 
grades  of  their  vocation,  are  here  in  great  numbers  in  the 
various  rooms  devoted  to  drawing  and  painting.  There  are 
classes,  also,  the  pupils  of  which,  both  boys  and  girls,  learn 
to  model  in  clay,  several  of  whom  have  produced  creditable 
works. 

In  the  daytime  most  of  these  upper  class-rooms  are 
empty;  but,  soon  after  seven  in  the  evening,  crowds  of 
young  people  begin  to  stream  in  from  the  streets,  ascend  the 
stairs,  and  fill  all  the  building  with  eager  young  life.  At 
half-past  seven  work  begins,  and  after  that  time  no  one  is 
admitted.  The  classes  continue  for  an  hour  or  two  hours, 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  subject  or  exercise.  By  half- 
past  nine  the  rooms  are  again  silent  and  deserted.  The 
reading-room  closes  at  ten ;  the  lights  are  extinguished,  and' 
the  Cooper  Institute  has  discharged  its  beneficent  office  for 
one  day  more. 


COOPER  INSTITUTE   AND  ITS  FOUNDER.  31 

All  this  is  free  to  every  one,  on  two  simple  conditions : 
first,  that  the  applicant  knows  how  to  read,  write,  and  cipher ; 
and,  secondly,  that  he  desires  to  increase  his  knowledge. 
Of  course,  every  one  must  observe  the  ordinary  rules  of 
decorum ;  but  this  is  so  uniformly  done  by  the  pupils  that 
it  scarcely  requires  mention. 

Such  is  the  Cooper  Institute.  This  is  that  Evening  School 
which  Peter  Cooper  resolved  to  found  as  long  ago  as  1810, 
when  he  was  a  coach-maker's  apprentice  looking  about  in 
New  York  for  a  place  where  he  could  get  instruction  in  the 
evening,  but  was  unable  to  find  it.  Through  all  his  career, 
as  a  cabinet-maker,  grocer,  manufacturer  of  glue,  and  iron- 
founder,  he  never  lost  sight  of  this  object.  If  he  had  a 
fortunate  year,  or  made  a  successful  speculation,  he  was 
gratified,  not  that  it  increased  his  wealth,  but  because  it 
brought  him  nearer  to  the  realization  of  his  dream. 

When  he  first  conceived  the  idea,  there  were  no  public 
schools  in  the  city,  and  such  a  thing  as  an  evening  school 
had  not  been  thought  of.  His  first  intention,  therefore,  was 
to  establish  such  an  evening  school  as  he  had  needed  himself 
when  he  was  an  apprentice  boy,  where  boys  and  young 
men  could  improve  themselves  in  the  ordinary  branches  of 
education.  But  by  the  time  that  he  was  ready  to  begin  to 
build,  there  were  free  evening  schools  in  every  ward  of  the 
city.  His  first  plan  was  therefore  laid  aside,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  found  something  which  should  impart  a  knowledge 
of  the  Arts  and  Sciences  involved  in  the  usual  trades ;  so 
that  every  apprentice  could  become  acquainted  with  the 
mechanical  or  chemical  principles  which  his  trade  compelled 
him  to  apply. 

Before  any  plan  was  fully  formed  in  his  mind,  he  met  in 
the  street  one  day  a  friend,  an  accomplished  physician,  and 
the  alderman  of  his  ward,  who  had  just  returned  from  a  tour 


32  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

in  Europe.  New  York  aldermen  were  then  its  most  eminent 
and  worthy  citizens,  — many  of  them  men  of  education  and 
public  spirit,  who  had  the  greatest  pride  and  interest  in  the 
improvement  and  progress  of  the  city,  —  men  who  would 
have  been  hewn  in  pieces  rather  than  accept  a  bribe,  and 
who  would  have  been  strongly  disposed  to  perform  that  op- 
eration upon  the  man  who  had  dared  to  offer  one.  Peter 
Cooper  was  himself  an  alderman  in  those  happy  days. 

This  physician,  on  meeting  his  friend  Cooper,  aware  of 
his  interest  in  the  scientific  education  of  mechanics,  began  to 
describe,  in  glowing  language,  the  Polytechnic  School  in 
Paris,  where  just  such  instruction  was  given  as  intelligent 
mechanics  and  engineers  require. 

"  Why,"  said  the  alderman,  w  young  men  come  from  all 
parts  of  France,  and  live  in  Paris  on  a  crust  a  day,  in  order 
to  attend  the  classes  at  the  Polytechnic." 

Mr.  Cooper  listened  eagerly  to  his  friend's  description, 
and  he  determined  that  his  institution  should  be  founded 
upon  a  similar  plan.  Already  he  had  begun  to  buy  portions 
of  the  ground  for  the  site.  I  have  been  informed  by  a  mem- 
ber of  his  family  that  he  bought  the  first  lot  about  thirty 
years  before  he  began  to  build,  and  from  that  time  continued 
to  buy  pieces  of  the  ground  as  he  could  spare  the  money. 
In  1854  the  whole  block  was  his  own,  and  he  began  to  erect 
thereon  a  massive  structure  of  stone,  brick,  and  iron,  six 
stories  in  height,  and  fire-proof  in  every  part.  It  cost  seven 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  which  was  all  the  fortune  the 
founder  possessed,  except  that  invested  in  his  business.  In 
1859  he  delivered  the  property,  with  the  joyful  and  proud 
consent  of  his  wife  and  children,  into  the1  hands  of  trustees, 
and  thus  placed  it  forever  beyond  his  control.  Two  thou- 
sand pupils  immediately  applied  for  admission,  a  number 
which  has  greatly  increase'd  every  year,  until  now  most  of 


COOPER  INSTITUTE   AND   ITS   FOUNDER.  33 

the  departments  are  filled  during  the  winter  season  with 
attentive  students.  From  the  beginning,  as  many  as  three 
thousand  persons  used  the  reading-room  every  week. 

Along  with  the  title-deeds,  the  founder  presented  to  the 
trustees  a  singularly  wise  and  affectionate  letter,  in  which  he 
expressed  the  objects  he  had  had  in  view  in  founding  the 
institution.  "My  heart's  desire  is,"  said  he,  "that  the  rising 
generation  may  become  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
works  of  nature,  and  the  mystery  of  their  own  being,  that 
they  may  see,  feel,  understand,  and  know  that  there  are 
immutable  laws,  designed  in  infinite  wisdom,  constantly 
operating  for  our  good,  —  so  governing  the  destiny  of 
worlds  and  men  that  it  is  our  highest  wisdom  to  live  in 
strict  conformity  to  these  laws." 

The  whole  letter  is  in  this  strain  of  benevolent  wis- 
dom. Perhaps  the  most  characteristic  passage  is  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 

"  My  feelings,  my  desires,  my  hopes,  embrace  humanity  through- 
out the  world ;  and,  if  it  were  in  my  power,  I  would  bring  all 
mankind  to  see  and  feel  that  there  is  an  almighty  power  and 
be'auty  in  goodness.  I  would  gladly  show  to  all,  that  goodness 
rises  in  every  possible  degree,  from  the  smallest  act  of  kindness 
up  to  the  Infinite  of  all  good.  My  earnest  desire  is  to  make  this 
building  and  institution  contribute,  in  every  way  possible,  to  unite 
all  in  one  common  effort  to  improve  each  and  every  human  being, 
seeing  that  we  are  bound  up  in  one  common  destiny,  and  by  the 
laws  of  our  being  are  made  dependent  for  our  happiness  on  the 
continued  acts  of  kindness  we  receive  from  each  other." 

He  concludes  this  long  and  eloquent  epistle  with  the  utter- 
ance of  a  desire,  that  thousands  of  youth  thronging  the 
halls  of  the  institution  might  learn  "  those  lessons  of  wisdom 
so  much  needed  to  guide  the  inexperience  of  youth  amid  the 
dangers  to  which  they  are  at  all  times  exposed." 


34  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTEKPKISE. 

A  pleasant  sight  it  is,  at  the  annual  exhibition  of  the 
Institute  in  the  spring,  when,  for  three  days  and  evenings, 
the  halls  are  crowded  with  people  viewing  the  works  of  art, 
—  the  drawings,  the  models,  the  paintings  produced  by  the 
pupils  during  the  year,  —  to  see  the  venerable  founder,  his 
countenance  beaming  with  happiness,  moving  about  among 
the  company,  and  receiving  their  congratulations  upon  the 
success  of  his  enterprise.  Few  evenings  in  the  winter  pass 
without  his  visiting  the  Institute.  It  is  the  delight  of  his 
old  age  to  see  so  many  hundreds  of  young  people  freely 
enjoying  the  advantages  which  he  longed  for  in  early  life, 
and  could  not  obtain.  He  has  recently  given  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  to  provide  the  institution  with  a 
library  of  books  of  reference. 


THE 

WONDEKFUL  GKOWTH  OF  CHICAGO. 


WHEN  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  was  preparing  for  his 
voyage  to  America,  Mr.  Kichard  Cobden  said  to  him,  "See 
two  things  in  the  United  States,  if  nothing  else,  — Niagara 
and  Chicago."  Professor  Smith  acted  upon  this  advice,  and 
while  visiting  Chicago,  acknowledged  that  the  two  objects 
named  by  his  friend  were  indeed  the  wonders  of  North  Amer- 
ica. Chicago  can  claim  one  point  of  superiority  over  its 
fellow-wonder.  According  to  the  geologists,  the  cataract 
has  been  about  four  hundred  centuries  in  becoming  what  it 
is,  but  the  city  has  come  to  pass  in  thirty-seven  years. 

On  Monday  morning,  October  4,  1834,  word  was  brought 
to  the  people  of  Chicago  that  a  large  black  bear  had  been 
seen  in  a  strip  of  woods  a  quarter  of  a  mile  out  of  town. 
The  male  population  seized  their  guns  and  made  for  the 
forest,  where  the  bear  was  soon  treed  and  shot.  After  so 
cheering  an  exploit,  the  hunters,  disinclined  to  resume  their 
ordinary  labors,  resolved  to  make  a  day  of  it,  and  have  a 
dash  at  the  wolves  which  then  prowled  nightly  in  every  part 
of  Chicago.  Before  the  night  closed  in  they  had  killed  forty 
wolves,  all  on  the  site  of  the  present  Metropolis  of  the 
Northwest !  The  wolves,  however,  did  not  take  the  hint, 
since  we  learn  that,  as  late  as  1838,  the  howlings  of  this 
pest  of  the  prairies  were  occasionally  heard  far  within  the 
present  city  limits.  Yet  even  then  the  inhabitants  of  the 
place  were  bewildered  at  the  rapidity  of  its  growth,  and 


36  TKITTMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

spoke  of  the  brilliant  prospects  before  it  very  much  as  they 
now  do. 

In  1830,  Chicago  was  what  it  had  been  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  —  a  military  post  and  fur  station,  consisting  of 
twelve  habitations.  There  was  a  log  fort,  with  its  garrison 
of  two  companies  of  United  States  troops.  There  was 
the  fur  agency.  There  were  three  taverns,  so  called,  much 
haunted  by  idle,  drunken  Indians,  who  brought  in  furs,  and 
remained  to  drink  up  the  proceeds.  There  were  two  stores 
supplied  with  such  goods  as  Indians  buy.  There  was  a 
blacksmith's  shop,  a  house  for  the  interpreter  of  the  station, 
and  one  occupied  by  Indian  chiefs.  All  that  part  of  Illinois 
swarmed  with  Indians.  As  many  Indian  trails  then  marked 
the  prairie  and  concentrated  at  the  agency  house  as  there  are 
railroads  now  terminating  in  the  city  of  Chicago ;  for  the 
Indians  brought  furs  to  that  point  from  beyond  the  Missis- 
sippi, as  well  as  from  the  great  prairies  of  the  North  and 
South.  Once  a  year,  John  Jacob  Astor  sent  a  schooner  to 
the  post  to  convey  supplies  to  it,  and  take  away  the  year's 
product  of  fur.  Once  a  week  in  summer,  twice  a  month  in 
winter,  a  mail  rider  brought  news  to  the  place  from  the  great 
world  on  the  other  side  of  the  Lakes.  In  1830,  there  resided 
at  Chicago,  besides  the  garrison  and  the  fur  agent,  four 
white  families.  In  1831,  there  were  twelve  families;  and 
when  winter  came  on,  the  troops  having  been  withdrawn, 
the  whole  population  moved  into  the  fort,  and  had  a  pleasant 
winter  of  it,  with  their  debating  society  and  balls.  In  1832, 
the  taxes  amounted  to  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars, 
twelve  of  which  were  expended  in  the  erection  of  Chicago's 
first  public  building,  — a  pound  for  stray  cattle. 

But  in  1833,  the  rush  began.  Before  that  year  closed 
there  were  fifty  families  floundering  in  Chicago  mud.  When 
the  forty  wolves  were  slain  in  1834,  there  were,  as  it 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  37 

\ 

appears,  nearly  two  thousand  inhabitants  in  the  town ;  and 
in  November,  1835,  more  than  three  thousand. 

The  motive  must  have  been  powerful  which  could  induce 
such  large  numbers  of  people  to  settle  upon  that  most  unin- 
viting shore.  A  new  town  on  a  flat  prairie,  as  seen  from  car 
windows,  has  usually  the  aspect  which  is  described  as  God- 
forsaken. Wagon  wheels  have  obliterated  the  only  beauty 
the  prairie  ever  had,  and  streaked  it  with  an  excellent  article 
of  blacking.  There  may  be  but  twenty  little  wooden  houses 
in  the  place ;  but  it  is  "  laid  out "  with  all  the  rigor  of  math- 
ematics ;  and  every  visible  object,  whether  animate  or  inan- 
imate,—  the  pigs  that  root  in  the  soft,  black,  prairie  mire, 
the  boys,  the  horses,  the  wagons,  the  houses,  the  fences,  the 
school-houses,  the  steps  of  the  store,  the  railroad  platform, 
— are  all  powdered  or  plastered  with  disturbed  prairie.  If, 
filled  with  compassion  for  the  unhappy  beings  whom  stern 
fate  seems  to  have  cast  out  upon  that  dismal  plain,  far  from 
the  abodes  of  men,  the  traveller  enters  into  conversation  with 
them,  he  finds  them  all  hope  and  animation,  and  disposed  to 
pity  him  because  he  neither  owns  any  corner  lots  in  that 
future  metropolis,  nor  has  intellect  enough  to  see  what  a 
speculation  it  would  be  to  buy  a  few.  Pity  !  You  might  as 
well  pity  the  Prince  of  Wales  because  he  is  not  yet  king. 

Chicago,  for  fifteen  years  after  it  began  its  rapid  increase, 
was  perhaps  of  all  prairie  towns  the  most  repulsive  to  every 
human  sense.  The  place  was  in  vile  odor  even  among  the 
Indians,  since  the  name  they  gave  it,  —  Chicago, — if  it 
does  not  mean  skunk,  as  some  old  hunters  aver,  signifies 
nothing  of  sweeter  odor  than  wild  onion. 

o 

The  prairie  on  that  part  of  the  shore  of  Lake  Michigan 
appears  to  the  eye  as  flat  as  the  lake  itself,  and  its  average 
height  above  the  lake  is  about  six  feet.  A  gentleman  who 
arrived  at  Chicago  from  the  South  in  1833  reports  that  he 


38  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

waded  the  last  eight  miles  of  his  journey  in  water  from  one 
to  three  feet  deep,  —  a  sheet  of  water  extending  as  far  as  the 
eye  could  reach  over  what  is  now  the  fashionable  quarter  of 
Chicago  and  its  most  elegant  suburbs.  Another  traveller 
records,  that,  in  1831,  in  riding  about  what  is  now  the  very 
centre  and  heart  of  the  business  portion  of  the  city,  he  often 
felt  the  water  swashing  through  his  stirrups.  Even  in  dry 
summer  weather  that  part  of  the  prairie  was  very  wet,  and 
during  the  rainy  seasons  no  one  attempted  to  pass  over  it  on 
foot.  "I  would  not  have  given  sixpence  an  acre  for  the 
whole  of  it,"  said  a  gentleman,  speaking  of  land  much  of 
which  is  now  held  at  five  hundred  dollars  a  foot.  It  looked 
so  unpromising  to  farmers'  eyes,  that  Chicago  imported  a 
considerable  part  of  its  provisions  from  the  eastern  shores  of 
Lake  Michigan,  as  late  as  1838.  Chicago,  that  did  this  only 
thirty-three  years  ago,  now  feeds  states  and  kingdoms. 

Why  settle  such  a  spot  when  the  same  shore  presented 
better  sites  ?  It  was  only  because  the  Chicago  River  fur- 
nished there  the  possibility  of  a  harbor  on  the  coast  of  the 
stormiest  of  lakes.  The  Chicago  River  is  not  a  river.  The 
lake  at  that  point  had  cut  into  the  soft  prairie,  just  as 
the  ocean  cuts  deep,  regular  fissures  into  the  rock -bound 
coast  of  New  England  and  its  rocky  isles.  This  cutting, 
which  was  a  hundred  yards  wide,  ran  straight  into  the  prairie 
for  three  quarters  of  a  mile,  then  divided  into  two  forks,  one 
running  north,  the  other  south,  and  both  parallel  to  the  lake 
shore.  These  two  branches  extend  for  several  miles,  and 
lose  themselves  at  last  in  the  prairie  sloughs.  There  is  no 
tide  or  flow  to  this  curious  inlet,  except  such  as  is  caused  by 
the  winds  blowing  the  waters  of  the  lake  into  it  which  flows 
out  when  the  wind  changes  or  subsides.  Originally  the 
inlet  was  twenty  feet  deep,  but  the  mouth  being  obstructed 
by  a  sand-bar,  it  only  admitted  vessels  of  thirty  or  forty 


WONDEKFUL   GROWTH    OF   CHICAGO.  39 

tons.  Bnt  the  crevice  was  there,  ready  for  the  dredge, 
which  has  since  made  it  capable  of  receiving  the  largest 
ships  that  sail  the  lakes,  and  given  Chicago  thirty  miles  of 
wharves.  Considering  the  peculiar  destiny  of  Chicago,  as 
the  great  distributor  of  commodities,  no  engineer  could  have 
contrived  a  more  convenient  harbor ;  for,  go  where  you  will 
in  the  city,  you  cannot  get  far  from  it ;  and  every  mill, 
warehouse,  elevator,  and  factory  can  have  its  branch  or 
basin,  and  receive  and  send  away  merchandise  in  boats  at  its 
door.  Those  drawbridges,  it  is  true,  are  rather  in  the  way 
at  present.  It  is  a  trial  to  the  patience  to  have  to  wait  while 
seventeen  little  snorting  tu^-boats  tow  through  the  draw 

O  O  O 

seventeen  long  three-masters  from  the  lake ;  but  nothing 
daunts  Chicago.  In  due  time  those  seventeen  maddening 
drawbridges  will  have  been  superseded  by  seventeen  tunnels. 
Underneath  that  oozy  prairie,  which  an  hour's  rain  converts 
into  Day  and  Martin,  and  an  hour's  sun  into  fine  Maccaboy, 
there  is  an  excellent  clay  which  affords  the  finest  tunnelling, 
and  which  indomitable  Chicago  turns  to  various  account, 
as  time  reveals  the  .need  of  it. 

The  growth  of  Chicago  since  1833,  though  it  strikes  every 
mind  with  wonder,  is  not  in  the  least  mysterious.  There 
the  city  stands,  at  the  southern  end  of  Lake  Michigan,  which 
gives  it  necessarily  a  leading  share  of  the  commerce  of  all 
the  lakes,  and  easy  access  by  land,  round  the  southern 
shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  to  all  the  east  and  southeast.  But 
there  Chicago  was  for  thirty  years  without  advancing  beyond 
the  rank  of  an  outpost  of  civilization,  and  there  it  might 
have  stood  for  ages  in  the  same  condition,  if  the  region 
behind/  it  had  remained  unpeopled.  That  muddy  inlet, 
called  the  Chicago  River,  is  a  portal  to  the  prairies,  and 
Chicago  has  grown  with  the  development  and  accessibility 
of  that  wonderful  region,  of  which  it  is  the  grand  depot, 

exchange,  counting-house,  and  metropolis. 

3 


40  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Those  prairies,  long  undervalued,  are  now  known  to  be 
that  portion  of  the  earth's  surface  where  Nature  has  accumu- 
lated the  greatest  variety  and  quantity  of  what  man  needs 
for  the  sustenance  and  the  decoration  of  his  life,  and  where 
she  has  placed  the  fewest  and  smallest  obstacles  in  his  way. 
That  is  the  region  where  a  deep  furrow  can  be  drawn 
through  the  richest  mould  for  thirty  miles  or  more,  without 
striking  a  pebble,  a  bog,  or  a  root ;  and  under  almost  every 
part  of  which  there  is  deposited  some  kind  of  mineral  — 
clay,  coal,  stone,  lead,  iron  —  useful  to  man.  Besides  being 
well  watered  by  rivers,  nowhere  is  it  so  easy  to  make  arti- 
ficial highways, — roads,  railroads,  and  canals.  The  climate, 
like  all  climates,  has  it  inconveniences,  but,  upon  the  whole, 
there  is  none  better.  Not  much  of  the  prairie  land  is  flat ; 
most  of  it  is  undulating  enough  for  utility  and  beauty. 
Blest  are  the  eyes  that  see  a  rolling  prairie  at  a  season  of 
the  year  when  the  grass  is  green  and  the  sky  is  clear  !  It  is 
an  enchanting  world  of  azure  and  billowy  emerald,  where, 
from  the  summit  of  a  green  wave  twenty  feet  high,  you  can 
see  whole  counties.  The  absence  of  all  dark  objects,  such 
as  woods,  roads,  rocks,  hills,  and  fences,  gives  the  visitor 
the  feeling  that  never  before  in  all  his  life  was  he  completely 
out  of  doors.  It  is  a  delicious  sensation,  when  you  inquire 
the  way  to  a  place  ten  miles  off,  to  have  it  pointed  out,  and 
to  make  for  it  across  the  verdant,  elastic  prairie,  untram- 
melled by  roads.  The  landscape  has,  too,  such  a  finished 
aspect,  that  the  traveller  finds  it  difficult  to  believe  that  he 
is  not  wandering  in  a  boundless  park,  refined  by  a  thousand 
years  of  culture.  When  the  country  has  been  settled  for 
many  years,  it  does  not  lose  this  park-like  appearance ;  it 
looks  then  as  if  some  enlightened  nobleman  had  turned  dem- 
ocrat, torn  down  his  park  walls,  and  invited  his  neighbors 
to  come  in  and  build  upon  his  rounded  knolls  and  wave-like 
ridges. 


WONDERFUL  GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  41 

And  there  is  enough  of  this  exquisite  country  for  twelve 
great  States,  and  to  maintain  a  population  of  one  hundred 
millions.  It  is  sure  to  be  the  seat  of  empire  forever. 
Chicago,  the  inevitable  metropolis  of  the  vigorous  north- 
western third  of  the  prairie  world,  has  taken  the  lead  in 
rendering  the  whole  of  it  accessible.  Her  vocation  is  to 
put  every  good  acre  in  all  that  region  within  ten  miles  of  a 
railroad,  and  to  connect  every  railroad  with  a  system  of 
ship-canals  terminating  in  the  Mississippi  and  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  That  is,  has  been,  and  will  be  for  many  a  year  to 
come,  Chicago's  work ;  and  her  own  growth  will  be  exactly 
measured  by  her  wisdom  and  efficiency  in  doing  it.  So  far, 
every  mile  of  railroad  has  yielded  its  proportionable  revenue 
to  the  great  prairie  exchange  and  banking-house ;  and  this 
fact,  now  clearly  seen  by  every  creature  in  the  town,  guar- 
antees the  execution  of  the  task. 

They  see  it  now;  but  it  ought  to  moderate  the  boasting 
of  some  of  the  elders  of  Chicago,  that  they  were  full  fifteen 
years  in  finding  it  out.  The  boasters  should  further  con- 
sider, that  the  canal  which  connects  Lake  Michigan  with  the 
Illinois  River  and  with  the  Mississippi  was  thought  of  in 
1814,  and  authorized  in  1825,  when  as  yet  there  was  no 
Chicago ;  and  the  fogy  interest  should  ever  be  kept  in  mind 
that  the  projectors  of  the  first  railroad  to  the  Mississippi  had 
to  encounter  the  opposition  of  most  of  the  business  men  of 
the  town,  who  were  certain  it  would  ruin  Chicago  by  distrib- 
uting its  business  along  the  line  of  the  road.  But,  with 
these  deductions  allowed,  there  is  enough  in  the  early  his- 
tory of  the  city  to  justify  more  self-laudation  than  is  gen- 
erally becoming. 

Those  crowds  of  idle  and  dissolute  Indians  were  the  first 
obstacle  to  the  growth  of  Chicago  with  which  the  early 
settlers  had  to  contend.  On  a  day  in  September,  1833, 


42  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

seven  thousand  of  them  gathered  at  the  Tillage  to  meet 
commissioners  of  the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  sell- 
ing their  lands  in  Illinois  and  Wisconsin.'  In  a  large  tent 
on  the  bank  of  the  river,  the  chiefs  signed  a  treaty  which 
ceded  to  the  United  States  the  best  twenty  million  acres  of 
the  Northwest,  and  agreed  to  remove  twenty  days'  journey 
west  of  the  Mississippi.  A  year  later,  four  thousand  of  the 
dusky  nuisances  assembled  in  Chicago  to  receive  their  first 
annual  annuity.  The  goods  to  be  distributed  were  heaped 
up  on  the  prairie,  and  the  Indians  were  made  to  sit  down 
around  the  pile  in  circles,  the  squaws  sitting  demurely  in 
the  outer  ring.  Those  who  were  selected  to  distribute  the 
merchandise  took  armfuls  from  the  heap,  and  tossed  the 
articles  to  favorites  seated  on  the  ground.  Those  who  were 
overlooked  soon  grew  impatient,  rose  to  their  feet,  pressed 
forward,  and  at  last  rushed  upon  the  pile,  each  struggling  to 
seize  something  from  it.  So  severe  was  the  scramble,  that 
those  who  had  secured  an  armful  could  not  get  away,  and 
the  greater  number  of  empty-handed  could  not  get  near  the 
heap.  Then  those  on  the  outside  began  to  hurl  heavy  arti- 
cles at  the  crowd,  to  clear  the  way  for  themselves,  and  the 
scramble  ended  in  a  fight,  in  which  several  of  the  Indians 
were  killed,  and  a  large  number  wounded.  Night  closed  in 
on  a  wild  debauch,  and  when  the  next  morning  arrived,  few 
of  the  Indians  were  the  better  off  for  the  thirty  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  goods  which  had  been  given  them.  Similar 
scenes,  with  similar  bloody  results,  were  enacted  in  the  fall 
of  1835  ;  but  that  was  the  last  Indian  payment  Chicago  ever 
saw.  In  September,  1835,  a  long  train  of  forty  wagons, 
each  drawn  by  four  oxen,  conveyed  away,  across  the  prairies, 
the  children  and  effects  of  the  Pottawatomies,  the  men  and 
able-bodied  women  walking  alongside.  In  twenty  days 
they  crossed  the  Mississippi,  and  for  twenty  days  longer 


WONDERFUL    GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  43 

continued  their  westward  march ;  and  Chicago  was  troubled 
with  them  no  more.  Walking  in  the  imposing  streets  of 
the  Chicago  of  to-day,  how  difficult  it  is  to  realize  that 
forty  years  have  not  elapsed  since  the  red  men  were  dis- 
possessed of  the  very  site  on  which  the  city  stands,  and  were 
"  toted  "  off  in  forty  days  to  a  point  now  reached  in  fifteen 
hours ! 

This  was  the  work  of  our  common  Uncle,  and  Chicago 
does  not  boast  of  it.  Nor  can  she  claim  the  credit  of  the 
improvement  of  the  harbor  in  1833  and  1834,  which  first 
called  the  attention  of  the  country  to  that  frontier  post. 
The  United  States  spent  thirty  thousand  dollars,  in  1833,  in 
dredging  out  the  Chicago  River ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1834, 
a  most  timely  freshet  swept  away  the  bar  at  the  mouth  of 
the  river,  making  it  accessible  to  the  largest  lake  craft.  This 
made  Chicago  an  important  lake  port  at  once.  The  town 
had  taken  its  first  stride  toward  greatness.  In  1836  the 
population  was  four  thousand. 

Then  there  was  a  check  to  the  prosperity  of  Chicago,  as 
to  that  of  Illinois  and  of  the  United  States ;  and  the  popu- 
lation scarcely  increased  for  five  years,  if,  indeed,  it  did  not 
dimmish.  Besides  the  mania  for  land  speculations,  which 
ended  in  prostrating  the  business  of  the  whole  country,  Illi- 
noisans  had  embarked  the  credit  of  the  State  in  schemes 
of  internal  improvement  too  costly  for  the  time,  though 
since  surpassed  and  executed  by  private  enterprise.  The 
State  was  bankrupt;  work  on  the  railroads  ceased;  and 
even  the  canal  designed  to  connect  Lake  Michigan  with  the 
Illinois  Eiver  was  abandoned  for  a  time.  Chicago  lan- 
guished, and  repented  that  it  had  ever  dared  to  be  anything 
but  a  military  post.  Those  corner  lots,  those  river  sites, 
those  lake  borders,  so  eagerly  sought  in  1835,  were  loath- 
some to  the  sight  of  luckless  holders  in  1837.  Some  men 


44  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

in  Chicago  are  millionaires  to-day  only  because  they  could 
not  sell  their  land  at  any  price  during  those  years  of  desola- 
tion and  despair.  But  it  was  in  those  very  years,  1837  to 
1842,  that  Chicago  entered  upon  its  career.  A  little  beef 
had  already  been  salted  and  sent  across  the  lake ;  but  in 
1839  the  business  began  to  assume  promising  proportions. 
3,000  cattle  had  been  driven  in  from  the  prairies,  barrelled 
and  exported.  In  1838,  a  venturesome  trader  shipped 
thirty-nine  two-bushel  bags  of  wheat.  Next  year  nearly 
4,000  bushels  were  exported;  the  next,  10,000;  the  next, 
40,000.  In  1842,  the  amount  rose,  all  at  once,  from 
40,000  to  nearly  600,000,  and  announced  to  parties  inter- 
ested, that  the  "  hard  times  "  were  coming  to  an  end  in  Chi- 
cago. But  the  soft  times  were  not.  That  mountain  of 
grain  was  brought  into  this  quagmire  of  a  town  from  far 
back  in  the  prairies,  —  twenty,  fifty,  one  hundred,  and  even 
one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  t  The  season  for  carrying  grain 
to  market  is  also  the  season  of  rain,  and  many  a  farmer  in 
those  times  has  seen  his  load  hopelessly  "  slewed  "  within 
what  is  now  Chicago.  The  streets  used  often  to  be  utterly 
choked  and  impassable  from  the  concourse  of  wagons,  which 
ground  the  roads  into  long  vats  of  blacking.  And  yet, 
before  there  was  a  railroad  begun  or  a  canal  finished,  Chi- 
cago exported  two  and  a  quarter  millions  of  bushels  of 
grain  in  a  year,  and  sent  back,  on  most  of  the  wagons  that 
brought  it,  part  of  a  load  of  merchandise. 

The  canal  connecting  the  Chicago  River  with  the  Illinois,, 
and  through  that  river  with  the  Mississippi,  begun  in  1836,. 
and  finished  in  1848,  opened  to  Chicago  an  immense  area  of 
uncultivated  acres,  which  could  then  come  into  profitable 
cultivation.  But  the  immediate  effects  of  this  great  event 
upon  the  trade  of  the  city  were  not  great  enough  to  open 
the  eyes  of  its  business  men  to  the  single  condition  upoa 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  45 

which  the  growth  of  the  town  depended,  namely,  its  acces- 
sibility to  the  Eastern  cities  and  to  the  great  prairie  world. 
Chicago  was  still  little  more  than  a  thriving  country  town, 
which  received  the  products  of  adjacent  farms,  and  gave  in 
exchange  merchandise  brought  in  three  weeks  from  the  sea- 
shore. Middle-aged  gentlemen  of  Chicago  have  a  lively 
recollection  of  the  opposition  of  store-keepers  to  the  first 
project  of  a  railroad  to  the  Mississippi  River.  In  1850, 
the  Chicago  and  Galena  Railroad  was  completed,  for  forty- 
two  miles,  to  the  rolling  prairies  by  which  the  beautiful  and 
vigorous  town  of  Elgin  is  surrounded.  From  that  time, 
there  were  indeed  fewer  ox-teams  wallowing  in  Chicago 
mire,  but  trade  increased,  and  changed  its  character  from 
retail  to  wholesale ;  and  the  wheat  coming  in  by  car-loads 
to  the  river  shore  was  poured  into  the  waiting  vessels  with 
a  great  saving  of  labor  and  expense.  Still  there  were  men 
in  Chicago  who  did  not  take  the  idea.  The  money  which 
built  that  forty-two,  miles  of  road  had  to  be  borrowed,  in 
great  part,  on  the  personal  responsibility  of  the  directors, 
and  the  road  could  not  have  been  built  at  all  but  for  the 
fact  that  a  prairie  railroad  is  nothing  but  two  ditches  and  a 
'track.  The  railroads,  said  the  fogies,  will  drain  the  country 
of  its  resources,  Chicago  of  its  business,  and  place  the  wel- 
fare of  Illinois  at  the  mercy  of  Eastern  capitalists.  But 
when,  in  1853,  the  road  paid  a  dividend  of  eleven  per  cent, 
and  it  was  found  that  Chicago  had  trebled  its  population  in 
six  years  after  the  opening  of  the  canal,  and  that  every  mile 
of  the  railroad  had  poured  its  quota  of  wealth  into  Chicago 
coffers,  then  the  truth  took  possession  of  the  whole  mind  of 
Chicago,  and  became  its  fixed  idea,  that  every  acre  with 
which  it  could  put  itself  into  easy  communication  must  pay 
tribute  to  it  forever.  From  that  time  there  has  been  no 
pause  and  no  hesitation ;  but  all  the  surplus  force  and  rev- 


46  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

enue  of  Chicago  have  been  expended  in  making  itself  the 
centre  of  a  great  system  of  railroads  and  canals. 

It  was  in  April,  1849,  that  the  whistle  of  the  locomotive 
was  first  heard  on  the  prairies  west  of  Chicago  ;  and  this  loco- 
motive drew  a  train  to  a  distance  of  ten  miles  from  the  city, 
amid  the  cheers  of  the  people  who  had  little  to  lose,  and  the 
forebodings  of  most  of  those  who  had  much.  The  railroad 
system  of  which  Chicago  is  a  centre  now  includes  ten  thou- 
sand miles  of  track,  and  the  railroad  system  of  which  Chicago 
is  the  centre  embraces  over  five  thousand  miles  of  track. 
A  passenger  train  reaches  or  leaves  the  city  every  fifteen 
minutes  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  Not  less  than  two  hun- 
dred trains  arrive  or  depart  in  a  day  and  night.  No  farm  in 
Illinois  is  more  than  fifty  miles  from  a  station,  and  very  few 
so  far ;  the  average  distance,  as  near  as  we  can  compute  so 
impossible  a  problem,  is  not  more  than  seven  miles.  There 
are  sixteen  points  on  the  Mississippi  which  have  railroad  com- 
munication with  Chicago.  The  Illinois  Central,  with  its 
seven  hundred  miles  of  road,  lays  open  the  central  part  of 
the  long  State  of  Illinois,  and  has  brought  into  culture  nearly 
two  million  acres  of  the  best  land  in  the  world.  The  straight 
road  to  St.  Louis  renders  accessible  another  line  of  Illinois 
counties,  besides  "  tapping  "  the  commerce  of  the  Missouri 
River  at  Alton,  and  that  of  the  Lower  Mississippi  at  St. 
Louis.  Other  roads  stretch  out  long  arms  into  the  fertile 
prairies  of  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  and 
extend  far  towards  the  mining  region  of  Lake  Superior; 
and  on  whatever  lines  railroads  are  building  or  con- 
templated to  the  Pacific,  Chicago  means  to  be  ready 
with  facilities  for  reaping  her  natural  share  of  the  advan- 
tages resulting  from  their  completion.  It  is  but  six- 
teen years  since  Chicago  first  had  railroad  communication 
with  the  cities  on  the  Atlantic  coast ;  and  the  traveller  now 


WONDERFUL    GEOWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  47 

has  his  choice  of  three  main  lines,  which  branch  out  to  every 
important  intermediate  point.  Railroad  depots,  immense  in 
extent  and  admirably  convenient,  are  rising  in  Chicago  in 
anticipation  of  the  incalculable  business  of  the  future,  — 
such  depots  as  ought  to  put  to  shame  the  directors  of  some 
of  our  Eastern  roads,  who  afford  to  their  human  freight 
accommodations  less  generous  than  Chicago  bestows  upon 
the  pigs  and  cattle  that  pass  through  the  city.  There  is  one 
depot  for  passengers  only,  which  has  under  cover  three  quar- 
ters of  a  mile  of  track,  from  which  three  trains  can  start  at 
the  same  moment,  without  the  least  danger  of  interference,  and 
wherein  no  passenger  has  to  cross  a  track  in  changing  cars. 
In  every  sphere  of  exertion,  those  Western  men  improve  upon 
Eastern  models  and  methods.  They  have  sleeping-cars  in 
those  grand  depots,  built  at  a  cost  of  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars,  in  which  a  king  would  only  be  too  happy  'to  ride, 
sup,  sleep,  and  play  whist. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country,  railroads  have  temporarily 
diminished  the  importance  of  water  communication.  This  is 
not  the  case  with  the  Great  Lakes,  nor  with  Chicago's  lion's 
share  of  their  commerce.  It  is  but  yesterday  ,that  Astor's 
single  schopner  of  forty  tons  was  the  only  vessel  known  to 
the  Chicago  River,  except  Indian  canoes.  Chicago  is  now 
more  than  the  Marseilles  of  our  Mediterranean,  though 
Marseilles  was  a  place  of  note  twenty-four  hundred  years 
ago.  Seventy-seven  steamers,  one  hundred  and  eigh- 
teen barques,  forty-three  brigs,  six  hundred  and  thirteen 
schooners,  fifty-three  scows  and  barges,  —  in  all,  nine  hun- 
dred and  four  vessels,  carrying  218,215  tons,  and  employ- 
ing ten  thousand  sailors, — ply  between  Chicago  and  the 
other  Lake  ports.  In  the  winter,  after  navigation  has  closed, 
five  hundred  vessels  may  be  counted  in  the  harbor,  frozen 
up  safely  in  the  ice.  On  a  certain  day  of  November,  1867, 


48  TKIUMPHS    OF    ENTEKPKISE. 

a  favorable  wind  blew  into  port  two  hundred  and  eighteen 
vessels  loaded  with  timber. 

Provided  thus  with  the  means  of  gathering  in  and  sending 
away  the  surplus  products  of  the  prairies,  the  granary  of  the 
world,  and  of  supplying  them  with  merchandise  in  return, 
Chicago  has,  for  the  last  few  years,  transacted  an  amount  of 
business  that  astonishes  and  bewilders  herself  when  she  has 
time  to  pause  and  add  up  the  figures.  The  export  of  grain, 
which  began  in  1838,  with  seventy-eight  bushels,  had  run  up 
to  six  millions  and  a  half  in  1853.  In  1854,  when  there 
were  two  lines  of  railroad  in  operation  across  the  State  of 
Michigan  to  the  East,  the  export  of  grain  more  than  doubled, 
the  quantity  being  nearly  eleven  millions  of  bushels.  From 
that  time  the  export  has  been  as  follows  :  — 

Tear.  Bushels. 

1854  .  V  /„  4  .  .  12,932,320 

1855  .  .  -,,,;;"  ,0  .  .  16,633,700 

1856  .  .  ;/,.  .  .  .  21,583,221 

1857  •  .  r-,,V  .  .  .  18,032,678 

1858  .  .  "„,_,'  .  .  .  20,035,166 

1859  .  ''."-    ,  ,v  „  I  .  .  16,771,812 

1860  .  ,  V,..  tV  .  .  31,108,759 
'  1861  .  ';v  Yv>  .  .  50,481,862 

1862  .         .     ,.'..   -:V        •         •  56,484,110 

1863  .         C,   •»  Y     •         •         •  54,741,839 
1864-5  .     ' \;,M     ....  47,124,494 
1865-6 53,212,224 

To  this  remarkable  statement  I  will  add  one  still  more 
wonderful,  showing  the  increase  during  the  years  1868 
and  1869.  I  copy  from  the  carefully  conducted  business 
department  of  the  "  Chicago  Tribune,"  under  the  date  of 
Dec.  30,  1870. 

" The  footing  up,"  says  the  editor,  "by  the  year's  business 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  49 

in  Chicago,  shows  receipts  of  merchantable  commodities, 
including  grain  and  lumber,  of  the  value  of  $415,652,000, 
against  $397,552,000  for  the  year  1868,  —  an  increase  of 
$18,100,000.  The  manufactures  of  the  city  amount  to 
$58,000,000,  against  $63,000,000  for  the  preceding  year,  — 
a  decrease  of  $5,000,000.  The  number  of  new  buildings 
erected  was  3,423,  of  an  estimated  value  of  $16,000,000, 
against  4,100  last  year,  of  an  estimated  value  of  $20,000,000. 
The  collections-  of  internal  revenue  at  this  point  for  the  year 
were  $7,680,500,  against  $4,939,487  for  the  preceding 
year — an  increase  of  $2,740,813,  of  which  increase  $2,088,- 
061  was  from  the  tax  on  distilled  spirits.  The  total  collec- 
tions from  distilled  spirits  were  $3,697,000. 

The  following  table  shows  the  receipts  of  the  principal 
articles  of  agricultural  produce  and  lumber  for  two  years  :— - 

1869.  1868. 

Flour,  bbls.         .  .V  2,259,904  2,092,553 

Wheat,  bushels  .  .  16,714,696  13,540,250 

Corn,  bushels     .  .  23,932,325  25,396,523 

Oats,  bushels      .  .  11,330,933  14,449,489 

Rye,  bushels       .  V  1,524,415  1,367,461 

Barley,  bushels   .  '.  1,832,470  1,511,219 

Hides,  Ibs.           .  .  27,635,424  27,813,162 

Dressed  Hogs,  number  209,463  239,113 

Live  Hogs',  number      .  1,700,050  - 1,706,782 

Cattle,  number.  .  .  403,627  324,524 

Sheep,  number    .         .  339,630  278,875 

Tobacco,  Ibs.       .  .  12,861,428  8,027,419 

Lumber,  M.         .    '  .  1,012,678  982,581" 

The  ease,  the  quietness,  and  celerity  with  which  this  incon- 
ceivable quantity  of  grain  is  "handled,"  as  they  term  it, 
although  hands  never  touch  it,  is  one  of  the  wonders  of 
Chicago.  Whether  it  arrives  by  canal,  railroad,  or  lake,  it 


50  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

comes  win  bulk,"  i.  e.  without  bags  or  barrels,  loose  in  the 
car  or  boat.  The  train  or  the  vessel  stops  at  the  side  of  one 
of  those  tall  elevators,  by  which  the  grain  is  pumped  into 
enormous  bins,  and  poured  out  into  other  cars  or  vessels  on 
the  other  side  of  the  building,  —  the  double  operation  being 
performed  in  a  few  minutes  by  steam.  The  utmost  care  is 
taken  to  do  this  business  honestly.  The  grain  is  all  in- 
spected, and  the  brand  of  the  inspector  fixes  its  grade  abso- 
lutely. The  owner  may  have  his  grain  deposited  in  the  part 
of  the  elevator  assigned  to  its  quality,  where  it  blends  with 
a  mountain  of  the  same  grade.  He  never  sees  his  grain 
again,  but  he  carries  away  the  receipt  of  the  clerk  of  the  ele- 
vator, which  represents  his  property  as  unquestionably  as  a 
certified  check.  Those  little  slips  of  paper,  changing  hands 
on  'Change,  constitutes  the  business  of  the  "grain  men"  of 
Chicago.  When  Chicago  exported  a  few  thousands  of 
bushels  a  year,  the  business  blocked  the  streets  and  filled 
the  town  with,  commotion ;  but  now  that  it  exports  fifty  or 
sixty  millions  of  bushels,  a  person  might  live  a  month  at 
Chicago  without  being  aware  that  anything  was  doing  in 
grain. 

Recently,  Chicago  has  sought  to  economize  in  transporta- 
tion, by  sending  away  part  of  this  great  mass  of  food  in  the 
form  of  flour.  The  ten  flour-mills  there  produced  in  1867 
just  one  thousand  barrels  of  flour  every  working-day. 

Saving  in  the  cost  of  transportation  being  Chicago's  special 
business  and  mission,  and  corn  being  the  great  product  of 
the  Northwest,  it  is  in  the  transport  of  that  grain  that  the 
most  surprising  economy  has  been  effected.  A  way  has  been 
discovered  of  packing  fifteen  or  twenty  bushels  of  Indian 
corn  in  a  single  barrel.  The  "  corn  crop,"  as  Mr.  S.  B. 
Ruggles  remarked  recently  in  Chicago,  "  is  condensed  and 
reduced  in  bulk,  by  feeding  it  into  an  animal  form,  more 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH  OF  CHICAGO  51 

portable.  The  hog  eats  the  corn,  and  Europe  eats  the  hog. 
Corn  thus  becomes  incarnate  ;  for  what  is  a  hog,  but  fifteen 
or  twenty  bushels  of  corn  on  four  legs  ?  "  Mr.  Kuggles  fur- 
ther observed,  amid  the  laughter  of  his  audience,  that  the 
three  hundred  millions  of  pounds  of  American  pork  exported 
to  Europe  in  1863  were  equal  to  "a  million  and  a  half  of 
hogs  marching  across  the  ocean." 

The  business  of  pork  packing,  as  it  is  called,  which  can 
only  be  done  to  advantage  on  a  great  scale,  has  attained 
enormous  proportions  in  Chicago,  surpassing  those  of  the 
same  business  in  Cincinnati,  where  it  originated.  In  one 
season  of  three  months,  Chicago  has  converted  nearly  two 
million  hogs  into  pork ;  which  was  one  third  of  all  the  hogs 
massacred  in  the  Western  country  during  the  year.  Walk- 
ing in  single,  file,  close  together,  that  number  of  hogs  would 
form  a  line  reaching  from  Chicago  to  Maine. 

During  the  last  few  years,  the  number  of  cattle  received 
in  Chicago  from  the  prairies,  and  sent  away  in  various  forms 
to  the  East,  has  averaged  about  one  thousand  for  each  work- 
ing-day. Nevertheless,  a  person  might  reside  there  for 
years,  and  never  suspect  that  any  business  was  done  in 
cattle,  never  see  a  drove,  never  hear  the  bellow  of  an  ox. 

A  bullock  is  an  awkward  piece  of  merchandise  to  "handle" ; 
he  has  a  will  of  his  own,  with  much  power  to  resist  the  will 
of  other  creatures  ;  he  cannot  be  pumped  up  into  an  elevator, 
nor  shot  into  the  hold  of  a  vessel ;  Ke  must  have  two  pails 
of  water  every  twelve  hours,  and  he  cannot  go  long  without  a 
large  bundle  of  hay.  There  is  also  a  Society  for  the  Preven- 
tion of  Cruelty  to  Animals,  with  an  eloquent  and  resolute 
Henry  Bergh  to  see  that  cattle  have  their  rights.  Chicago 
has  learned  to  conform  to  these  circumstances,  and  now 
challenges  mankind  to  admire  the  exquisite  way  in  which 
those  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  cattle  per  annum,  and 


52  TRIUMPHS    OF  ENTERPRISE. 

those  millions  of  hogs,  sheep,  and  calves,  are  received, 
lodged,  entertained,  and  despatched. 

Out  on  the  flat  prairie,  four  miles  south  of  the  city,  and 
two  feet  below  the  level  of  the  river,  —  part  of  that  eight 
miles  which  our  traveller  found  under  water  in  1833,  —  may 
be  seen  the  famous  "  Stock  Yards,"  styled,  in  one  of  the 
Chicago  guide-books,  "The  great  bovine  city  of  the  world." 
Two  millions  of  dollars  have  been  expended  there  in  the 
construction  of  a  cattle  market.  The  company  owning 
it  have  now  nearly  a  square  mile  of  land,  345  acres  of 
which  are  already  enclosed  into  cattle  pens,  — 250  of  these 
acres  being  floored  with  plank.  There  is  at  the  present 
time  pen-room  for  1*0,000  cattle,  75,000  hogs,  and  20,000 
sheep  ;  the  sheep  and  hogs  being  provided  with  sheds  ;  and 
no  Thursday  has  passed  since  the  yards  were  opened  when 
they  were  not  full,  —  Thursday  being  the  fullest  day.  This 
bovine  city  of  the  world,  like  all  other  prairie  cities,  is  laid 
out  in  streets  and  alleys,  crossing  at  right  angles.  The  pro- 
jectors have  paid  New  York  the  compliment  of  naming  the 
principal  street  Broadway.  It  is  a  mile  long  and  seventy- 
five  feet  wide,  and  is  divided  by  a  light  fence  into  three 
paths,  so  that  herds  of  cattle  can  pass  one  another  without 
mingling,  and  leave  an  unobstructed  road  for  the  drovers. 
Nine  railroads  have  constructed  branches  to  the  yards,  and 
there  is  to  be  a  canal  connecting  it  with  one  of  the  forks  of 
the  Chicago  River. 

Nothing  is  more  simple  and  easy  than  the  working  of  the 
system  of  these  stock  yards.  The  sum  of  anguish  annually 
endured  in  the  United  States  will  be  greatly  lessened  when 
that  system  shall  prevail  all  along  the  line  from  the  prairies 
to  the  Atlantic.  A  cattle  train  stops  along  a  street  of  pens  ; 
the  side  of  each  car  is  removed ;  a  gently  declining  bridge 
woos  the  living  freight  down  into  a^clean,  planked  enclosure, 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  53 

where  on  one  side  is  along  trough,  which  the  turn  of  a  faucet 
fills  with  water,  and  on  another  side  is  a  manger  which  can 
be  immediately  filled  with  hay.     While  the  tired  and  hungry 
animals  are  enjoying  this  respite  from  the  torture  of  their 
ride,  their  owner  or  his  agent  finds  comfort  in  the  "  Hough 
House  "  (so  named  from  one  of  the  chief  promoters  of  the 
enterprise),  a  handsome  hotel  of  yellow  stone,  built  solely 
for  the  accommodation  of  the  "  cattle  men,"  and  capable  of 
entertaining  two  hundred  of  them  at  once.     A  few  steps^ 
from  the  hotel  is  the  Cattle  Exchange,  another  spacious  and 
elegant  edifice  of  yellow  stone,  wherein  there  is  a  great  room 
for  the  chaiferiug  or  preliminary  "gassing"  (as  the  drovers 
term  it)   of  buyers  and  sellers  ;  also  a  bank  solely  for  cattle 
men's  use,  with  a  daily  business  ranging  from  one  hundred 
thousand  to  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  ;  also  a  telegraph 
office,  which  reports,  from  time  to  time,  the  price  of  beef, 
pork,  and  mutton  in  two  hemispheres,  and  sends  back  to  the 
cattle  markets  of  mankind  the  condition  of  affairs  in  this, 
the  great  bovine  city  of  the  world.     The  "gassing"  being 
accomplished,  the  cattle  men  leave  this  fine  Exchange,  and  go 
forth  to  view  the  cattle  which  have  been  the  subject  of  their 
conversation,  and  they  move  about  in  the  midst  of  those  pro- 
digious herds,  and  inspect  the  occupants  of  any  particular 
pen,  with  as  much  ease  as  a  lady  examines  pictures  in  a 
window.      The  purchase  completed,  the   cattle  are   driven 
along,  through  opening  pens  and  broad  streets,  to  the  yards 
adjoining  the  railroad,  by  which*  they  are  to  resume  their 
journey.     On  the  way  to  those  yards,  they  are  weighed  at 
the  rate  of  thirty  cattle  a  minute,  by  merely  pausing  in  the 
weighing  pen  as  they  pass.     The  men  return  to  the  Ex- 
change, where  the  money  is  paid, —  all  the  cattle  business 
being  done  for  cash, — after  which  they  conclude  the  affair  by 
dining  together  at  the  hotel,  or  at  an  excellent  restaurant  in 
the  Exchange  itself. 


54  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

In  this  elegant  Exchange-room,  two  classes  of  cattle  men 
meet,  — those  who  collect  the  cattle  from  the  prairie  States, 
—  Texas,  Missouri,  Kansas,  Illinois,  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Min- 
nesota, —  and  those  who  distribute  the  cattle  among  the 
Eastern  cities.  One  of  the  potent  civilizers  is  doing  busi- 
ness on  the  grand  scale.  By  means  of  this  cattle  Exchange, 
a  repulsive  and  barbarizing  business  is  lifted  out  of  the  mire, 
and  rendered  clean,  easy,  respectable,  and  pleasant.  The 
actual  handling  and  supervision  of  the  cattle  require  few 
men,  who  are  themselves  raised  in  the  social  scale  by  being 
parts  df  a  great  system  ;  while  the  controlling  minds  are  left 
free  to  work  at  the  arithmetic  and  < book-keeping  of  the  busi- 
ness. We  remember  with  pleasure  the  able  and  polite  gen- 
tlemen the  necessities  of  whose  business  suggested  this 
enterprise,  and  who  now  control  it.  The  economy  of  the 
system  is  something  worth  consideration.  The  design  of 
the  directors  is  to  keep  the  rent  of  the  pens  at  such  rates  as 
to  exactly  pay  the  cost  of  cleaning  and  preserving  them,  and 
to  get  the  requisite  profit  only  from  the  sale  of  hay  and  corn. 
One  hundred  tons  of  hay  are  frequently  consumed  in  the 
yards  in  one  day.  If  those  yards  were  in  New  England,  the 
sale  of  manure  would  be  an  important  part  of  the  business ; 
but  in  those  fertile  prairies,  they  are  glad  to  sell  it  at  ten 
cents  a  wagon-load,  which  is  less  than  the  cost  of  shovelling 
it  up. 

There  is  one  commodity  in  which  Chicago  deals,  that 
makes  a  show  proportioned  'to  it  importance.  Six  hundred 
and  fourteen  millions  of  feet  of  timber,  equal  to  about  fifty 
millions  of  ordinary  pine  boards,  which  Chicago  sold  a  year 
or  two  since,  cannot  be  hidden  in  a  corner.  The  prairies,  to 
which  Nature  has  been  so  variously  bountiful,  lack  this  first 
necessity  of  the  settler,  and  it  is  Chicago  that  sends  up  the 
lake  for  it  and  supplies  it  to  the  prairies.  Miles  of  timber 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  55 

yards  extend  along  one  of  the  forks  of  the  river ;  the  har- 
bor is  choked  with  arriving  timber  vessels  j  timber  trains 
shoot  over  the  prairies  in  every  direction.  To  economize 
transportation,  they  are  now  beginning  to  dispatch  timber  in 
the  form  of  ready-made  houses.  There  is  a  firm  in  Chicago 
which  is  happy  to  furnish  cottages,  villas,  school-houses, 
stores,  taverns,  churches,  court-houses,  or  towns,  wholesale 
and  retail,  and  to  forward  them,  securely  packed,  to  any 
part  of  the  country.  No  doubt  we  shall  soon  have  the  exhil- 
aration of  reading  advertisements  of  these  town-makers,  to 
the  effect  that  orders  for  the  smallest  villages  will  be  thank- 
fully received ;  county  towns  made  to  order ;  a  metropolis 
furnished  with  punctuality  and  despatch ;  any  town  on  our 
list  sent,  carriage  paid,  on  receipt  of  price  ;  rows  of  cottages 
always  on  hand;  churches  in  every  style.  N.  B.  Clergy- 
men and  others  are  requested  to  call  before  purchasing  else- 
where. 

While  this  great  business  has  been  forming,  Chicago  itself 
has  undergone  many  and  strange  transformations.  The  pop- 
ulation, which  numbered  70  in  1830,  was  4,853  in  1840. 
During  the  next  five  years,  it  nearly  trebled,  being  12,088  in 
1845.  In  1850,  the  year  in  which  the  railroad  was  opened  to 
Elgin,  the  population  had  mounted  to  29,963,  and  during  the 
next  ten  years  it  quadrupled.  In  1860, 110,973  persons  lived 
in  Chicago.  In  1865,  after  four  years  of  war,  the  population 
was  178,900.  In  the  spring  of  1870,  if  we  include  the  sub- 
urban villages,  which  are  numerous  and  flourishing,  and 
which  are  as  much  Chicago  as  Harlem  is  New  York,  we  may 
safely  put  down  the  population  at  330,000.  The  closing  of 
the  war  has  not  checked  the  growth  of  the  city.  We  are 
assured  by  the  moderate  and  most  able  "Chicago  Tri- 
bune," that  in  1866  the  number  of  houses  of  all  kinds  built 
in  Chicago  was  nine  thousand ;  for  the  construction  of  which 


56  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE . 

sixty-two  millions  of  bricks  were  made  from  the  clay  over 
which  the  city  stands.  We  learn,  also,  from  a  series  of  arti- 
cles in  the  "  Chicago  Kepublican,"  that  in  the  young  cities 
of  the  Northwest,  which  must  ever  flourish  or  decline  with 
Chicago,  there  is  the  same  astonishing  activity  in  the  build- 
ing of  houses. 

The  city  is  no  longer  a  quagmire.  For  many  years  after 
Chicago  began  to  be  a  flourishing  town,  its  business  men 
aimed  to  make  a  rapid  fortune,  and  retire  to  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson,  or  to  the  pleasant  places  of  New  England,  and  enjoy 
it.  Who  could  enjoy  life  on  a  wet  prairie,  made  passable 
by  pine  boards,  through  the  knot-holes  and  crevices  of  which 
water  could  be  seen,  and  where  a  carriage  would  sink  three 
or  four  feet  within  two  miles  of  the  court-house  ?  But  about 
twenty  years  ago,  when  the  effect  of  the  first  railroad  revealed 
the  future  of  Chicago,  the  leading  men  said  to  one  another : 
w  This  city  is  to  be  the  abode  of  a  million  or  more  of  the 
American  people.  Meanwhile,  it  is  our  home.  Let  us  make 
it  fit  to  live  in.  Let  us  make  it  pleasant  for  our  children." 
Seldom  have  men  taken  hold  of  a  task  more  repulsive  or 
more  difficult,  and  seldom  has  human  labor  produced  such 
striking  results  in  so  short  a  time.  The  mud  and  water  for 
a  long  period  were  the  despair  of  the  people,  since  water 
will  only  run  down  hill,  and  part  of  the  town  was  below  the 
level  of  the  lake.  Planking  was  a  poor  expedient,  though 
unavoidable  for  a  time.  They  tried  a  system  of  open 
ditches  for  a  while,  which  in  wet  seasons  only  aggravated 
the  difficulty.  Many  hollow  places  were  filled  up,  but  the 
whole  prairie  was  in  fault.  It  became  clear,  at  length,  that 
nothing  would-  suffice,  short  of  raising  the  whole  town  ;  and, 
accordingly,  a  higher  grade  was  established,  to  which  all 
new  buildings  were  required  to  conform.  It  soon  appeared 
that  this- grade  was  not  high  enough,  and.  one  still  higher  was 


WONDERFUL  GROWTH  OF   CHICAGO.  57 

ordained.  Even  this  proved  inadequate;  and. the  present 
grade  was  adopted,  which  lifts  Chicago  about  twelve  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  prairie,  and  renders  it  perfectly  drain- 
able,  and  gives  dry  cellarage.  It  is  as  common  now  in 
Chicago  to  store  such  merchandise  as  dry  goods,  books,  and 
tea  in  basements,  as  it  is  in  sandy  New  York ;  and  in  nearly 
all  the  newer  residences,  the  dining-room  and  kitchen  are  in 
the  basement.  During  the  ten  years  while  Chicago  was 
going  up  out  of  the  mud  of  the  prairie  to  its  present  eleva- 
tion, it  was  the  best  place  in  the  world  in  which  to  develop 
the  muscles  of  the  lower  half  of  the  body.  All  the  newest 
houses  were  built,  of  course,  upon  the  new  grade,  and  some 
spirited  owners  raised  old  buildings  to  the  proper  level ;  but 
many  houses  were  upon  the  grades  previously  established, 
and  a  large  number  were  down  upon  the  original  prairie. 
The  consequence  was,  that  the  plank  sidewalk  became  a 
series  of  stairs.  For  half  a  block  you  would  walk  upon  an 
elevated  path,  looking  down  upon  the  vehicles  of  the  street 
many  feet  below ;  then,  you  would  descend  a  flight  of  stairs 
to,  perhaps,  the  lowest  level  of  all,  along  which  you  would 
proceed  only  a  few  steps,  when  another  flight  of  stairs 
assisted  you  to  one  of  the  other  grades.  Such,  however, 
were  the  energy  and  public  spirit  of  the  people,  that  these 
inequalities,  although  their  removal  involved  immense  expen- 
diture, have  nearly  all  disappeared.  The  huge  Tremont 
House,  a  solid  hotel  as  large  as  the  Astor,  was  raised  bodily 
from  its  foundation  and  left  at  the  proper  height ;  and  whole 
blocks  of  brick  stores  went  up  about  the  same  time  to  the 
same  elevation.  To  this  day,  however,  there  are  places  in 
the  less  important  streets,  where  the  stranger  can  see  at  one 
view  all  the  past  grades  of  the  town.  The  sidewalk  will  be 
upon  the  grade  now  established ;  the  main  street  upon  the 
one  that  preceded  the  present  and  final  level ;  the  houses, 


58  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

upon  the  grade  established  when  it  was  first  determined  to 
raise  the  town ;  while  in  the  vacant  lots  near  by  portions  of 
the  undisturbed  prairie  may  be  discovered.  The  principal 
streets  now  paved  with  stone,  or  else  with  that  ne  plus  ultra 
of  comfort  for  horse  and  rider,  for  passer-by  and  ladies  liv- 
ing near,  —  the  Nicolson  pavement. 

The  people  of  Chicago  have  had  a  long  and  severe  strug- 
gle with  their  river,  and  they  have  not  yet  made  a  complete 
conquest  of  it.  The  river  and  its  two  forks,  as  we  have 
before  remarked,  so  divide  the  town,  that  you  cannot  go  far 
in  any  direction  without  crossing  one  of  them.  In  old  times, 
the  Indians  carried  people  over  in  their  canoes,  and,  for 
some  time  after  the  Indians  had  been  wagoned  off  beyond 
the  Mississippi,  a  chance  canoe  was  still  the  usual  means  of 
crossing.  Ferries  of  canoes  were  then  established,  and,  in 
course  of  time,  the  canoes  expanded  into  commodious  row- 
boats.  Next,  floating  bridges  were  tried,  much  to  the  dis- 
content of  the  mariners,  who  found  it  difficult  to  rein  in  their 
swift  vessels  in  time.  One  day,  when  a  gale  was  blowing 
inward,  a  vessel  came  rushing  into  the  river,  and,  before  the 
bridge  could  be  floated  round,  ran  into  it,  cut  it  in  halves, 
and  kept  on  her  way  up  the  stream.  The  sailors  much 
approved  this  manoeuvre,  and  it  had  also  the  effect  of  indu- 
cing landsmen  to  "reconsider  floating  bridges.  Drawbridges 
then  came  in,  seventeen  of  which  now  span  the  river  and  its 
branches.  Better  drawbridges  than  these  can  nowhere  be 
found ;  but  the  inconvenience  to  which  they  subject  the  busy 
"  Chicagonese "  must  be  seen  to  be  understood.  Unfavor- 
able winds  sometimes  detain  vessels  in  the  lake,  until  three 
hundred  of  them  are  waiting  to  enter.  The  wind  changes  ; 
the  whole  fleet  comes  streaming  in  5  in  twelve  hours,  three 
hundred  vessels  are  tugged  through  the  drawbridges,  which 
is  an  average  of  more  than  two  a  minute.  At  all  the  bridges, 


WONDERFUL  GROWTH  OF   CHICAGO.  59 

and  on  both  sides  of  them,  crowds  of  impatient  people,  and 
long  lines  of  vehicles  extending  back  farther  than  the  eye 
can  reach,  are  waiting.  Now  and  then  the  bridges  can  be 
closed  for  a  short  time,  and  then  tremendous  is  the  rush  to 
cross.  Often,  before  all  the  waiters  have  succeeded  in  get- 
ting over,  the  bell  rings,  the  bridge  is  cleared,  and  the  draw 
swings  open  to-  admit  another  procession  of  vessels,  each 
towed  by  a  puffing  and  snorting  little  propeller.  These  are 
exceptional  days,  and  there  are  other  exceptional  days  in 
which  the  bridges  are  seldom  opened.  But  we  were 
informed,  that  a  business  man  who  has  any  important  ap- 
pointment in  a  distant  part  of  the  town,  allows  an  hour  for 
possible  detention  at  the  bridges.  Omnibuses  leaving  the 
hotels  for  a  depot  a  quarter  of  a  mile  distant,  but  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river,  start  an  hour  before  the  departure  of 
the  train. 

All  this  inconvenience  will  soon  be  a  'thing  of  the  past- 
Before  these  lines  are  read  the  first  two  tunnels  under  the 
river  will  have  been  opened.  Others  will  be  at  once  begun. 

That  river,  which  is  not  a  river,  and  because  it  is  not  a 
river,  is  now  giving  Chicago  another  opportunity  to  exert 
its  unconquerable  energy  and  resolution.  Into  this  forked 
inlet  all  the  drainage  of  the  town  is  poured,  and  there  is  no 
current  to  carry  it  away  into  the  lake.  Despite  incessant 
dredging,  these  streams  of  impurity  fill  the  channel,  and 
convert  the  water  into  a  liquid  resembling  in  color  and  con- 
sistency a  rich  pea  soup,  such  as  the  benevolent  Farmer 
ladles  out  so  plentifully  to  the  poor  women  of  New  York. 
This  evil,  great  already,  must  increase  as  rapidly  as  the 
town  increases,  and  might  in  time  render  the  place  uninhab- 
itable. Chicago  is  now  expending  two  or  three  millions  of 
dollars  in  changing  that  pool  of  abominations  into  a  pure 
and  running  stream.  The  canal,  before  spoken  of,  which 


60  TEITJMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

connects  Lake  Michigan  with  the  Illinois  River,  begins  at 
the  end  of  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Chicago  River,  the 
water  of  which  is  now  pumped  up  into  the  canal  by  steam. 
This  canal  Chicago  is  deepening,  so  that  the  water  of  the 
river  will  flow  into  it,  and  run  down  through  all  its  length 
to  the  Illinois,  and  so  carry  away  the  impurities  of  the  town 
to  the  Mississippi.  Thus,  by  one  operation,  the  pumping  is 
obviated,  the  canal  is  improved,  the  river  is  purified,  and 
the  city  is  rendered  more  salubrious.  The  Chicago  River 
will  at  length  become  a  river;  only,  it  will  run  backwards. 

With  regard  to  that  two-mile  tunnel  under  the  blue  lake, 
by  whi^h  its  purest  water,  all  uncontaminated  by  the  town, 
flows,  by  ten  thousand  rills,  into  every  room  and  closet  of 
the  place,  it  is  not  Chicago's  fault  if  all  the  world  does  not 
understand  it.  Indeed,  we  are  expressly  informed  by  a 
guide-book,  that  "when  the  work  was  conceived,  the  whole 
civilized  world  was  awed  by  the  magnitude  of  the  project." 
In  what  state  of  mind,  then,  will  the  whole  world  find  itself, 
when  it  learns  that  a  work  of  such  magnitude  was  executed 
in  just  three  years,  at  a  cost  of  less  than  a  million  dollars? 
The  work  is  really  something  to  be  proud  of,  not  for  its 
magnitude,  but  for  the  simplicity,  originality,  and  boldness 
of  the  idea. 

Until  within  the  last  ten*  years,  Chicago  was  little  more 
than  what  we  have  previously  named  it, — the  great  North- 
western Exchange.  It  was  a  buyer  and  a  seller  on  a  great 
scale ;  but  it  made  scarcely  anything,  depending  upon  the 
Eastern  States  for  supplies  of  manufactured  merchandise. 
Upon  this  fact  was  founded  the  ridiculous  expectation,  enter- 
tained at  the  beginning  of  the  late  war  by  the  enemies  of  the 
Republic,  of  seeing  the  Western  States  secede  from  the 
Union.  The  Western  man,  however,  has  the  eminent  good 
fortune  of  not  being  a  fooL  Every  business  man  in  Chicago 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  61 

was  intelligent  enough  to  know  that  this  dependence  upon 
the  East  was  a  necessity  of  the  case  and  time.  Newly  set- 
tled countries  cannot  manufacture  their  own.  pins,  watches, 
and  pianos,  nor  even  their  own  boots,  overcoats,  and  sauce- 
pans, and  they  are  glad  enough  to  give  other  communities 
some  of  their  surplus  produce  in  exchange  for  those  articles. 
But,  happily,  there  is  FREE  TRADE  between  the  Eastern  and 
Western  States.  The  only  and  sufficient  protective  tariff 
imposed  upon  that  trade  is  the  cost  of  transportation.  Con- 
sequently, we  find  that  just  as  fast  as  it  is  best  for  both 
sections  that  the  West  should  cease  to  depend  upon  the  East, 
just  so  fast,  and  no  faster,  Chicago  gets  into  manufacturing. 
In  all  the  history  of  business,  there  cannot  be  found  a  more 
exquisite  illustration  of  the  harmonious  and  safe  working  of 
untrammelled  trade.  At  first,  Chicago  began  to  make,  on  a 
small  scale,  the  rough  and  heavy  implements  of  husbandry. 
That  great  factory,  for  example,  which  now  produces  an 
excellent  farm-wagon  every  seven  minutes  of  every  working- 
day,  was  founded  twenty-five  years  ago  by  its  proprietor 
investing  all  his  capital  in  the  construction  of  one  wagon. 
At  the  present  time,  almost  every  article  of  much  bulk  used 
upon  railroads,  in  farming,  in  warming  houses,  in  building 
houses,  or  in  cooking,  is  made  in  Chicago.  Five  thousand 
persons  are  now  employed  there  in  manufacturing  coarse 
boots  and  shoes.  The  prairie  world  is  mowed  and  reaped 
by  machines  made  in  Chicago,  whose  people  are  feeling  their 
way,  too,  into  making  woollen  and  cotton  goods.  Four  or 
five  miles  out  on  the  prairie,  where,  until  May,  1867,  the 
ground  had  never  been  broken  since  the  Creation,  there 
stands  now  the  village  of  Austin,  which  consists  of  three  large 
factory  buildings,  many  nice  cottages  for  workmen,  and  two 
thousand  young  trees.  This  is  the  seat  of  the  Chicago  Clock 
Factory,  the  superintendent  of  which  was  that  honest  and 


62  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ingenious  man,  Chauncey  Jerome,  the  inventor  of  most  of 
the  wonderful  machinery  by  which  American  clocks  have 
been  made  so  excellent  and  so  cheap.  After  his  melancholy 
failure  in  Connecticut  (wholly  through  the  fault  of  others, 
for  he  had  retired  from  active  business),  he  found  an  honor- 
able asylum  here,  and  gave  to  this  establishment  the  benefit 
of  his  fifty-five  years'  experience  in  clock-making.  The 
machinery  now  in  operation  can  produce  one  hundred  thou- 
sand clocks  a  year ;  -and  the  proprietors  had  received  orders 
for  eight  months'  product  before  they  had  finished  one  clock. 
They  expect  to  be  able  to  sell  their  clocks  at  New  Haven 
quite  as  cheap  as  those  made  in  New  Haven ;  since  nearly 
•every  metal  and  wood  employed  in  the  construction  of  a 
clock  can  be  bought  cheaper  in  Chicago  than  in  Connec- 
ticut. A  few  miles  farther  back  on  the  prairies,  at  Elgin, 
there  is  the  establishment  of  the  National  Watch  Company, 
which  produces  fifty  watches  a  day,  and  competes  for  a 
share  of  the  ten  or  eleven  millions  of  dollars  which  the  peo- 
ple of  America  pay  every  year  for  new  watches.  They  are 
beginning  to  make  pianos  at  Chicago,  besides  selling  a  hun- 
dred a  week  of  those  made  in  the  East ;  and  the  great  music 
house  of  Root  and  Cady  are  now  engraving  and  printing  all 
the  music  they  publish.  Melodeons  are  made  in  Chicago  on 
a  great  scale. 

It  is  in  this  gradual  and  safe  manner,  that  trade  adjusts 
itself  to  circumstances  when  it  is  untrammelled  by  law ;  and 
such  will  be  the  working  of  free /trade  in  all  the  nations  of 
the  earth,  when,  by  and  by,  all  the  nations  shall  be  in  a 
condition  to  adopt  it.  For  some  years  to  come  —  so  long, 
indeed,  as  the  national  debt  is  our  king  —  we  shall  have  to 
approach  free  trade  with  slow  and  cautious  steps ;  but  we 
need  not  lose  sight  of  the  truth,  that  universal  free  trade  is 
the  consummation  at  which  the  statesmanship  of  all  lands 
is  to  aim. 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  63 

Chicago  is  now  intent  upon  four  things,  —  the  establish- 
ment of  manufactures,  the  improvement  of  the  city,  the 
completion  of  more  railroads  to  the  Pacific,  the  construction 
of  ship  canals  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
He  who  can  lend  a  helping  hand  or  head  to  any  of  these  is 
welcome,  and  especially  he  who  can  make  any  useful  article 
well.  There,  as  everywhere,  mere  buyers  and  sellers  are 
in  excess.  Those  "Commercial  Colleges  "  which  abound  in 
all  the  Western  cities,  useful  as  they  are  in  many  respects, 
appear  to  be  luring  young  men  from,  their  proper  vocation 
of  producers  and  makers,  into  the  over-crowded  business  of 
distributing;  so  that  even  in  busy  Chicago,  where  every 
able  man  is  doing  two  men's  work,  the  merchants  are  pes- 
tered with  applications  for  clerkships,  and  the  salaries  of 
clerks  are  generally  low.  These  waiting  youths  are  the 
only  idle  class  in  Chicago.  There  are  no  men  of  leisure 
there.  No  man  thinks  of  stopping  work  because  he  has 
money  enough  for  his  personal  use.  In  all  the  Western 
country,,  as  a  rule,  the  richer  a  man  is,  the  harder  he  toils, 
and  the  more  completely  is  he  the  servant  of  his  fellow- 
citizens. 

Chicago,  already  a  handsome  town,  is  going  to  be  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  cities  in  the  world.  Twenty  years  ago, 
when  the  present  court-house,  or  City  Hall,  was  built,  the 
corporation  sent  all  the  way  to  Lockport,  in  the  State  of 
New  York,  for  the  stone,  — a  dark  granite.  Long  before 
the  people  had  done  boasting  of  this  grand  and  gloomy 
edifice,  the  men  who  were  digging  the  canal  at  Athens,  a 
point  about  fourteen  miles  from  the  city,  struck  a  deposit  of 
soft,  cream-colored  stone,  which  proved  to  be  an  inexhausti- 
ble quarry.  For  some  time,  this  stone  was  supposed  to  be 
useless,  and  it  was  regarded  only  iu  the  light  of  an  obstruc- 
tion to  the  excavation  of  the  canal.  It  was  discovered,  a 


64  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

year  or  two  after,  that  fragments  of  the  stone  which  had 
been  exposed  to  the  air  for  a  few  months  had  become 
harder ;  and  by  very  slow  degrees  the  truth  dawned  upon 
a  few  interested  minds,  that  Chicago  had  stumbled  upon 
a  treasure.  It  was,  nevertheless,  with  much  difficulty  that 
builders  were  induced  to  give  a  trial  to  what  is  now  recog- 
nized as  the  very  best  and  most  elegant  building  material  in 
the  country.  Soft  to  the  chisel,  it  is  hard  in  the  finished 
wall ;  and  devoid  of  the  glare  of  white  marble,  it  possesses 
that  hue  of  the  Parthenon  which,  Dr.  Wordsworth  says, 
looks  as  though  it  had  been  "  quarried  out  of  the  golden 
light  of  an  Athenian  sunset."  The  general  use  in  Chicago 
of  this  light-colored  stone,  and  of  the  light-yellow  brick  of 
the  prairie  clay,  gives  to  the  principal  streets  a  cheerful, 
airy,  elegant  aspect,  which  is  enhanced  by  the  promptitude 
with  which  all  the  new  and  pleasing  effects  in  street  archi- 
tecture are  introduced.  The  Western  man,  in  all  that  he 
does,  and  in  much  that  he  thinks,  is  the  creature  of  all  the 
earth  who  is  least  trammelled  by  custom  and  tradition.  His 
ruling  aim,  when  he  sets  about  anything,  is  to  do  it  better 
than  the  same  thing  has  ever  been  done  before  since  the  cre- 
ation of  man.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  that  the  best 
houses  in  the  leading  avenues  of  Chicago  are  far  more  pleas- 
ing to  the  eye  than  those  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  in  New  York, 
and  that  the  general  effect  of  the  best  streets  is  finer. 

Of  course,  Chicago  is  still  a  forming  city.  It  stretches 
along  the  lake  about  eight  miles,  but  does  not  reach  back 
into  the  prairie  more  than  two.  In  the  heart  of  the  town 
the  stranger  beholds  blocks  of  stores,  solid,  lofty,  and  in 
the  most  recent  taste,  hotels  of  great  magnitude,  and  public 
buildings  that  would  be  creditable  to  any  city .  The  streets 
are  as  crowded  with  vehicles  and  people  as  any  in  New 
York,  and  there  is  nothing  exhibited  in  the  windows  of  New 


WONDERFUL,   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  65 

York  which  .may  not  be  seen  in  those  of  Chicago.  As  the 
visitor  passes  along,  he  sees  at  every  moment  some  new  evi- 
dence that  he  has  arrived  at  a  rich  metropolis.  Now  it  is  a 
gorgeous  and  enormous  carpet-house  that  arrests  his  atten- 
tion ;  now  a  huge  dry-goods  store,  or  vast  depot  of  gro- 
ceries. The  next  moment  he  finds  himself  peering  into  a 
restaurant,  as  splendid  as  a  steamboat;  or  into  a  dining- 
room  window,  where,  in  addition  to  other  delicacies  of  ^the 
season,  there  is  a  spacious  cake  of  ice,  covered  with  naked 
frogs,  reposing  picturesquely  in  parsley.  'Farther  on,  he 
pauses  before  a  jeweller's,  brilliant  with  gold,  silver,  dia- 
monds, and  pictures,  where  a  single  item  of  the  business  was 
the  sale  of  three  thousand  two  hundred  watches,  of  which 
one  thousand  were  American.  The  number  and  extent  of 
the  book-stores  is  another  striking  feature ;  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  go  far  without  being  strongly  reminded  that  pianos 
and  cabinet-organs  are  for  sale  in  the  city. 

Along  the  lake,  south  of  the  river,  for  two  or  three 
miles,  extend  the  beautiful  avenues  which  change  insensibly 
into  those  streets  of  cottages  and  gardens  which  have  given 
to  Chicago  the  name  of  the  "Garden  City."  This  is  a  pleas- 
ant, umbrageous  quarter,  where  glimpses  are  caught  of  the 
blue  lake  that  stretches  away  to  the  east  for  sixty  miles. 
On  this  shore  is  the  monument  to  Douglas,  and  there  is  a 
shady  street  near  by  that  will  last  longer  than  the  monu- 
ment, called  Douglas  Place.  In  all  Chicago  there  is  not 
one  tenement  house.  Thrifty  workmen  own  the  houses  they 
live  in,  and  the  rest  can  still  hire  a  whole  house ;  conse- 
quently seven  tenths  of  Chicago  consist  of  small  wooden 
houses,  in  streets  with  wooden  sidewalks  and  roadways  of 
prairie  black. 

It  is  always  interesting  to  a  stranger  to  notice'  the  names 
of  the  streets  of  a  town  which  he  visits  for  the  first  time. 


66  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPKISE. 

Chicago  boasts  a  Goethe  Street  and  a  Schiller  Street.  There 
is  also  a  Greeley,  a  Bremer,  a  Poe,  a  Kane,  a  Kossuth,  a 
Bross,  a  Went  worth,  and  a  Long  John  Street.  Local  his- 
tory is  commemorated  in  Calumet,  Astor,  Fur,  Kiusie, 
Blackhawk,  and  Wahpanseh;  and  general  history,  in 
Blucher,  Bonaparte,  Buena  Vista,  Calhoun,  Burnside,  Cass, 
De  Kalb,  Carroll,  Fabius,  Macedonia,  Garibaldi,  Madison, 
Washington,  Monroe,  Lafayette,  Franklin,  Butler,  Grant, 
Kansas,  Lincoln,  Mayflower,  Napoleon,  Eandolph,  Sigel, 
and  Thomas.  New  York  is  called  to  mind  in  Broadway, 
the  Bowery,  and  the  Bloomingdale  Road ;  and  Philadelphia, 
in  Chestnut  Street.  There  is  likewise  a  Rosebud  Street,  a 
Selah  Street,  a  Queer  Place,  and  a  Grub  Street. 

When  next  we  chronicle  the  progress  of  Chicago,  we 
shall  have  to  describe  a  grand  Boulevard,  furnishing  a 
drive  of  fifteen  miles  round  the  city,  shaded  with  trees,  and 
lined  with  villas  and  gardens.  A  great  park  is  also  in  con- 
templation, in  .which  Chicago  hopes  to  behold  the  Strange 
spectacle  of  hill  and  dale.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  park 
will  enclose  a  range  of  mountains,  the  loftiest  peaks  of 
which  will  pierce  the  air  half  a  hundred  feet ;  and  up  those 
giddy  heights  Chicago's  boys  will  climb  on  Saturday  after- 
noons, inhale  the  breath  of  liberty  on  the  mountain  tops, 
and  learn  why  Switzerland  is  free. 

Would  the  stranger  see  the  MEN  whose  public  spirit  and 
energy  have  created  Chicago,  and  are  guiding  its  destinies? 
Then  he  must  go,  about  noon,  to  the  beautiful  edifice  in  the 
centre  of  the  city,  wherein  the  Board  of  Trade  assembles. 
This  is  the  Exchange  of  Chicago.  Here,  in  a  spacious  and 
lofty  apartment,  decorated  with  fine  fresco  paintings  by  resi- 
dent Italian  artists,  are  daily  gathered  from  a  thousand  to 
two  thousand  of  the  men  who  control  the  collection  and  dis- 
tribution of  those  grain  mountains,  those  miles  of  timber 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH  OF  CHICAGO*.  67 

stacks,  and  all  that  mass  of  produce  of  which  we  have  spoken. 
Here  are  the  buyers,  the  sellers,  the  insurers,  and  the  for- 
warders, and  loud  is  the  roar  of  their  talk.  Groups  of  men 
cover  the  whole  extent  of  the  floor.  A  few  minutes  suffice 
to  buy,  insure,  and  despatch  a  ship-load  of  wheat ;  a  few 
minutes  suffice  to  convert  a  sanguine  speculator  into  the 
lamest  of  ducks,  or  send  him  away  rejoicing  in  the  posses- 
sion of  new  means  of  speculation.  Suddenly,  loud  knocks 
are  heard  in  a  gallery  above,  which  commands  a  view  of  the 
whole  scene.  The 'roar  is  instantly  hushed,  and  all  eyes  and 
all  ears  are  directed  toward  a  gentleman  in  the  gallery,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Board,  who  proceeds,  in  a  sonorous  voice, 
to  read  the  last  telegram  of  prices  in  New  York  and  London. 
The  instant  he  has  finished,  conversation  sets  in  with  renewed 
vigor,  and  the  whole  hall  is  filled  with  noise.  At  a  semi- 
circle of  mahogany  desks  at  one  end  of  the  room  sit  the  gen- 
tlemen representing  the  press,  who  compile  daily  reports  of 
the  business  of  the  city,  which  for  completeness  and  extent 
are  unequalled.  In  about  an  hour  and  a  half  the  business 
of  the  day  is  done,  and  the  room  is  empty,  with  half  an  inch 
of  grain  on  the  floor,  ready  bruised  for  the  janitor's  pig  and 
chickens. 

No  body  of  men  in  this  land  were  more  heartily  loyal 
to  their  country  during  the  war  than  the  Chicago  Board 
of  Trade.  Adjoining  the  great  exchange-room  is  a  smaller 
apartment,  handsomely  furnished  in  black  walnut,  for  the 
meetings  of  the  Directors  of  the  Board ;  and  in  this  room 
are  preserved  the  flags  of  the  several  regiments  raised  or 
equipped  under  the  auspices  and  by  the  assistance  of  the 
Board.  It  so  chanced,  that  while  we  were  in  the  great  room, 
Mr.  Walter,  of  the  London  "Times,"  passed  through  it,  un- 
observed, escorted  by  Governor  Bross,  of  the  "Chicago 
Tribune,"  who  usually  does  the  honors  of  the  city —  and  no 


68  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

one  could  do  them  more  agreeably  or  more  intelligently  —  to 
visitors  of  distinction.  When  it  transpired  who  it  was  that 
had  accompanied  Governor  Bross,  a  difficult  moral  problem 
was  discussed  by  some  of  those  exceedingly  uncompromising 
loyalists.  The  question  was,  Suppose  Mr.  Walter  had  been 
recognized,  which  ought  to  have  been  the  controlling  princi- 
ple in  the  minds  of  those  present,  —  courtesy  to  a  stranger, 
or  disapproval  of  a  public  enemy?  In  other  words,  would 
it  have  been  right  and  becoming  in  the  Board  of  Trade  to 
have  hissed  Mr.  Walter  a  little?  From  the  tone  of  the 
remarks  upon  this  abstruse  question  of  morals,  we  fear  that, 
if  Mr.  Walter  had  been  generally  recognized,  he  would  not 
have  been  left  in  doubt  as  to  the  feelings  of  the  Board  toward 
a  man  who,  the  Board  thought,  gave  us  two  years  more  of 
war  than  we  should  have  had  if  he  had  not  led  England 
against  us.  Those  radical  and  straightforward  men  of  wheat 
and  wool  do  not,  perhaps,  sufficiently  consider  that  the  great 
journals  of  the  world  are  the  world's  paid  servants,  who 
seem  to  lead,  but  are  in  reality  propelled. 

The  great  question  respecting  Chicago,  and  all  othei 
places  under  heaven,  is,  What  is  the  quality  of  the  human 
life  lived  in  it  ?  It  is  well  to  have  an  abundance  of  beef, 
pork,  grain,  wool,  and  pine  boards,  so  long  as  these  are  used 
as  means  to  an  end;  and  that  end  is  the  production  and 
nurture  of  happy,  intelligent,  virtuous,  and  robust  human 
beings.  This  alone  is  success  ;  all  short  of  this  is  failure. 
Cheerful,  healthy  human  life,  —  that  is  the  wealth  of  the 
world ;  and  the  extreme  of  destitution  is  to  have  all  the  rest 
and  not  that.  The  stranger,  therefore,  looks  about  in  this 
busy,  thriving  city,  and  endeavors  to  ascertain,  above  all 
else,  how  it  fares  there  with  human  nature.  In  Chicago,  as 
everywhere,  human  nature  is  weak  and  ignorant,  temptable 
and  tempted ;  and  in  considering  the  influences  to  which  it 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  69 

/ 

is  there  subjected,  we  must  only  ask  whether  those  influ- 
ences are  more  or  less  favorable  than  elsewhere. 

The  climate  upon  the  whole  is  good.  The  winters,  short, 
sharp,  and  decisive,  are  healthful,  of  course.  The  summer 
heats  are  mitigated  by  the  prairie  breezes  and  the  fresh,  cool 
winds  from  the  lake.  Occasionally  a  southern  wind  pre- 
vails, and  gives  Chicago  some  stifling  days.  To  those  who 
can  afford  it,  the  northern  lakes  offer  an  easy  and  complete 
escape  from  the  hot  weather,  as  well  as  a  trip  of  almost  un- 
equalled variety  and  charm.  With  regard  to  food,  Chicago 
has  the  pick  of  the  best ;  nothing  remains  but  to  learn  how 
to  cook  it.  The  West  has  much  to  acquire  in  this  great  art, 
and  even  many  of  the  large  hotels  are  wanting  in  their  mis- 
sion of  setting  an  example  of  cookery.  The  raw  material 
abounds.  It  is  only  necessary  not  to  spoil  it  with  grease, 
saleratus,  and  the  lazy,  odious  frying-pan.  We  are  happy 
tp  state  that  excellent  dinners  are  daily  enjoyed  in  Chicago, 
though  a  prodigious  number  of  bad  ones  are  bolted. 

Some  parts  of  the  mind  are  well  cultivated  there.  Chi- 
cago is  itself  a  college  to  all  its  inhabitants.  When  we  see 
a  boy  reading  in  Roman  history  an  account  of  the  Appian 
Way,  we  all  say  that  he  is  improving  his  mind.  The  Nicol- 
son  pavement  has  ten  times  more  thought  in  it  than  the 
Appian  Way ;  why  is  not  an  urchin  improving  his  mind  who 
stands,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  looking  on  while  the 
workmen  arrange  the  little  blocks,  and  pour  in  the  odorous 
tar?  Then  those  mighty  schemes  for  ship  canals,  and  new, 
fkr-reaching  railroads,  and  the  improved  methods,  processes, 
models,  —  all  these  are  the  daily  theme  of  conversation  and 
keen  discussion,  with  maps  spread  out  and  authorities  at 
hand.  A  great  and  splendid  city  is  rising  from  the  prairie, 
in  the  view  of  all  the  people,  who  watch,  criticise,  compare, 
suggest.  It  is  observed  that  the  too  respectable  Bostonian, 


70  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  staid  Philadelphia!!,  the  self-indulgent  and  thoughtless 
New  Yorker,  acquire,  after  living  a  while  in  Chicago,  a  vivacity 
of  mind,  an  interest  in  things  around  them,  a  public  spirit, 
which  they  did  not  possess  at  home.  It  must  be  very  diffi- 
cult for  a  boy  to  grow  up  a  fool  in  a  Western  city,  unless, 
indeed,  he  takes  to  vice,  which,  there  and  everywhere,  is 
deadly  to  the  understanding. 

It  is  with  pleasure  that  we  report  to  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  that  their  fellow-citizens  of  Chicago  are  look- 
ing well  to  the  interests  of  those  who  are  to  carry  on  their 
work  when  they  are  gone.  The  public  schools  of  the  city 
are  among  the  very  best  in  the  United  States.  The  build- 
ings are  large,  handsome,  and  convenient ;  much  care  is  taken 
with  regard  to  the  ventilation  of  the  rooms  and  the  exercise 
of  the  pupils ;  the  salaries  of  the  teachers  range  from  four 
hundred  to  twenty-four  hundred  dollars  a  year ;  the  gentle- 
men of  the  Board  of  Education  are  among  the  most  respec- 
table and  capable  of  the  citizens.  •  In  the  High  School,  an 
institution  of  which  any  city  in  Christendom  might  be  justly 
proud,  colored  lads  and  girls  may  be  seen  in  most  of  the 
classes,  mingled  with  the  other  pupils ;  and  in  the  evening 
schools  of  the  city,  colored  men  and  women  are  received  on 
precisely  the  same  footing  as  white.  Colored  children  also 
attend  the  common  schools,  and  no  one  objects,  or  sees  any- 
thing extraordinary  in  the  fact.  No  little  child  is  allowed  to 
pass  more  than  half  an  hour  without  exercise.  In  the  higher 
classes,  the  physical  exercises  occur  about  once  an  hour ;  the 
windows  are  thrown  open,  the  pupils  rise,  and  all  the  class 
imitate  the  motions  of  the  teacher  for  five  minutes.  The 
boys  in  the  High  School  have  a  lesson  daily  in  out-door  gym- 
nastics, skilfully  taught  by  a  gentleman  who  left  one  of  his 
legs  before  Vicksburg.  The  girls  have  a  variety  of  curious 
exercises,  which  combine  play  and  work  in  an  agreeable 


WONDERFUL  GROWTH  OF  CHICAGO.  71 

manner.  Connected  with  the  High  School,  there  is  a  small 
school  of  young  children,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  young 
ladies  who  intend  to  become  teachers  an  opportunity  of  prac- 
tice, under  the  direction  of  a  teacher  already  experienced. 
If  in  one  room  we  regretted  to  see  boys  and  girls  expending 
their  force  in  acquiring  a  smattering  of  Latin,  we  were  con- 
soled in  another  by  discovering  that  those  who  are  wise 
enough  to  prefer  it  can  learn  German  or  French. 

The  peril  of  America  is  the  over-schooling  of  her  chil- 
dren. In  Chicago,  as  everywhere  else,  the  grand  fault  of 
the  public  schools  is,  that  too  much  is  attempted  in  them. 
The  Board  of  Education  is  ambitious  ;  the  superintendent  is 
ambitious  ;  the  teachers,  the  parents,  the  children  are  ambi- 
tious ;  and  there  is  nowhere  in  the  system  any  one  who 
stands  between  these  co-operating  ambitions  and  the  delicate 
organization  of  the  children.  Five  hours'  school  a  day,  with 
two  hours'  intermission,  and  no  lessons  learned  at  home,  — 
these  are  our  colors,  and  we  nail  them  to  the  mast.  Even 
on  Sundays,  the  poor  children  have  no  rest  from  eternal 
school  and  the  stimulating  influence  of  older  minds. 

Three  medical  colleges,  two  seminaries,  a  university,  an 
academy  of  sciences, —  all  in  their  infancy,  but  full  of  young 
vigor,  —  exist  in  Chicago.  It  is  startling  to  find  on  the 
western  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  where,  thirty-five  years 
ago,  seven  thousand  Indians  howled,  an  astronomical  observa- 
tory of  the  most  improved  model,  provided  with  a  telescope, 
which  is  considered  the  finest  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  and  a 
resident  professor  capable  of  using  it.  Chicago  will  have  a 
museum  before  New  York  has  one.  Eleven  years  ago,  a  few 
gentlemen  interested  in  science,  particularly  in  natural  his- 
tory and  geology,  formed  a  society  for  the  collection  of 
specimens,  and  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.  Three  years 
since,  it  occurred  to  one  or  two  of  the  more  zealous  members 

5 


72  TJilUMPHS    OP   ENTERPRISE. 

that  the  time  had  come  for  the  society  to  take  a  step  forward. 
The  merchants  of  Chicago  have  a  finely  developed  talent  for 
subscribing  money,  and  before  many  days  had  gone  by,  one 
hundred  and  twenty  men  had  subscribed  five  hundred  dollars 
each,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing,  on  a  proper  basis,  the 
Chicago  Academy  of  Sciences.  A  lot  had  been  purchased  ; 
a  building  was  begun ;  and  Chicago  will  have  a  museum 
before  many  years  have  passed.  Already  the  society  pos- 
sesses many  objects  of  particular  interest,  —  among  others,  a 
specimen  of  the  prairie  squirrels  thai  cannot  climb,  which 
ought  to  be  put  in  the  same  case  with  the  eyeless  fish  of  the 
Mammoth  Cave. 

The  daily  mental  food  of  the  business  men  in  Western 
cities  is  the  daily  newspaper ;  and  many  of  them  read  noth- 
ing else.  The  daily  press  of  Chicago  is  conducted  with  the 
vigor,  enterprise,  and  liberality  of  expenditure  which  we 
should  expect  to  see  in  a  city  pervaded  with  the  spirit  of 
advertising.  Readers  have  not  forgotten  General  Butler's 
famous  apple-speech  in  front  of  the  City  Hall  in  New  York, 
the  report  of  which  filled  nearly  two  columns  of  the  New 
York  papers.  It  was  telegraphed,  with  all  the  remarks  and 
doings  of  the  crowd,  to  the  "  Chicago  Republican."  The 
'  Chicago  Tribune  "  has  excellent  "  own  correspondents  "  in 
New  York,  London,  Paris,  and  Washington,  besides  occa- 
sional contributors  in  twenty  other  cities.  On  almost  any 
day  in  the  year,  this  excellent  newspaper  publishes  tele- 
graphic news  from  as  many  as  twenty-five  points,  and  on 
extraordinary  occasions,  the  number  of  dispatches  has  risen 
to  seventy-five .  In  the  office  of  the  "  Republican  "  is  kept  a  1  ist 
of  seven  hundred  and  sixty  names  of  persons  residing  in  dif- 
ferent towns,  to^vhom  the  editor  can  send  for  detailed  infor- 
mation when  anything  of  interest  has  occurred  within  their 
reach.  If  the  Mammoth  Cave  should  cave  in,  or  Niagara 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF  CHICAGO.  73 

break  down,  there  would  be  some  one  on  the  spot,  an  hour 
after,  collecting  details  of  the  catastrophe  for  the  w  Chicago 
Republican  "  on  the  next  morning.  The  "  Evening  Journal," 
too,  though  it  cannot  compete  with  morning  papers  in  point 
of  news,  presents  a  singularly  well-digested  and  tastefully 
selected  variety  of  interesting  reading. 

The  press  of  Chicago  has  opinions  of  its  own.  The  "  Tri- 
bune," unlike  its  great  New  York  namesake,  favors  free  trade. 
The  editors  are  prepared  to  recommend  that  the  policy  of 
protection  should  be  carried  no  farther,  and  that  future 
changes  made  in  the  tariff  should  lessen  restrictions  upon 
trade,  not  increase  them ,  The  "  Chicago  Times  "  is  the  leading 
Democratic  paper  of  the  Northwest,  but  it  advocates  "  impar- 
tial suffrage,"  as  well  as  universal  amnesty.  It  was  the  first 
paper  of  its  party  that  had  the  ability  to  see  that  the  one 
chance  of  the  Democratic  party's  regaining  power  was  to  give 
the  suffrage  to  the  great  mass  of  the  negroes  immediately. 
Ignorance  is  ignorance.  Ignorance,  always  gravitating  the 
wrong  way,  can  be  cajoled  and  bought.  It  is  the  dema- 
gogue's natural  prey ;  honest  men  cannot  get  near  enough  to 
it  for  a  shot.  What  a  reproach  to  Tammany,  that  a  politi- 
cian in  far-off  Chicago  should  have  been  the  first  to  see  the 
mode  of  New-Yorkizing  the  politics  of  the  South  I 

The  community  that  possesses  a  large  surplus  of  beef, 
pork,  grain,  wool,  and  timber,  can  have  whatever  other 
purchasable  commodity  it  desires.  To  Chicago,  accordingly, 
painters  come  and  paint  pictures  for  its  parlors,  or  send  them 
from  afar.  There  is  a  surprising  taste  there  for  every  kind 
of  artistic  decoration.  It  is  more  common  to  see  good 
engravings  and  tolerable  paintings  in  the  residences  of  Chi- 
cago than  in  those  of  New  York.  In  a  window  of  one  of 
the  stores,  we  noticed  a  very  pretty  statue  of  the  boy  Wash- 
ington, executed  by  a  resident  sculptor.  And  we  agree 


74  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

with  the  possessor  of  the  Crosby  Opera  House,  that  he  drew 
in  the  lottery  the  most  elegant  interior  in  the  country.  We 
must  claim  the  privilege  of  assei-ting,  that,  in  the  construc- 
tion of  buildings  designed  for  the  assembling  together  of 
many  people,  Chicago  surpasses  the  rest  of  the  world.  There 
are,  positively,  no  churches  anywhere  else  in  which  elegance 
and  convenience  are  so  perfectly  combined  as  in  the  newer 
churches  of  Chicago.  That  beautiful  opera  house  wants 
nothing  but  an  opera.  We  heard  within  it,  however,  one  of 
the  concerts  of  the  Philharmonic  Society,  at  which  the  violin 
playing  of  Camilla  Urso  was  listened  to  with  rapture,  while 
an  abstruse  symphony,  performed  by  a  German  orchestra, 
was  borne  with  the  patient  faith  which  we  Northern  barba- 
rians generally  exhibit  on  such  occasions.  We  firmly  believe 
the  music  is  sublime;  we  are  ashamed  that  we  cannot  enjoy 
it;  and  now  and  then,  when  the  orchestra  plays  a  little 
louder  than  usual,  we  wake  from  a  revery,  and  almost  per^ 
snade  ourselves  that  we  are  receiving  pleasure.  As  in  New 
York,  so  in  Chicago.  Only,  the  politer  Chicago  gentlemen 
do  not  talk,  nor  the  ladies  giggle. 

But  Chicago  does  more  than  listen  patiently  to  foreign 
artists.  It  has  music  of  its  own.  Those  war-songs,  which 
cheered  ten  thousand  camp-fires,  and  solaced  many  a  weary 
march,  —  "Tramp,  tramp,  tramp,  the  Boys  are  Marching/' 
"The  Battle  Cry  of  Freedom,  ""Kingdom's  Coming, "«  Wake 
Niooclemus,"  and  twenty  others,  familiar  to  the  army  and 
country,  — were  composed,  printed  and  published  in  Chicago. 
That  worthy  gentleman,  Mr.  George  F.  Eoot,  of  the  firm  of 
Root  and  Cady,  composed  several  of  the  best  of  them.  Mr. 
H.  C.  Work,  connected  with  the  same  house,  is  the  author 
of  others,  some  of  which  had  a  wonderful  run.  Now,  reader, 
mark  how  time  brings  it  revenges  I  Many  years  ago,  Alonzo 
Work,  father  of  this  composer,  was  walking  along  a  road  in 


WONDERFUL,   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  75 

Missouri,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  a  party  of  fugitive 
slaves,  who  asked  the  way  to  a  free  State.  He  directed  them 
on  their  course,  and  gave  them  some  slight  aid  in  money. 
For  doing  .this  he  was  condemned  to  twenty  years'  imprison- 
ment at  hard  labor,  and  served  several  years  of  the  term 
before  he  was  pardoned.  In  1861,  his  son,  a  poor  invalid 
journeyman  printer,  climbed  up  to  Mr.  Root's  study,  and  laid 
upon  his  desk  the  music  and  words  of  a  war  song.  Aston- 
ished that  so  forlorn  an  apparition  should  have  ever  had  a 
thought  of  music  in  his  soul,  Mr.  Root  was  still  more  aston- 
ished to  discover  that  he  had  a  genius  for  producing  such 
music  as  the  people  love.  Before  he  left  the  room  he  had 
engaged  to  compose  for  Messrs.  Root  and  Cady  for  five 
years.  His  songs  have  been  sung  by  millions  of  men,  and 
he  now  has  a  pleasant  cottage,  paid  for,  and  an  income  from 
copyrights  of  three  thousand  dollars  a  year. 

Such  books,  too,  as  the  people  of  Chicago  and  the  North- 
west are  buying !  Already  several  large  book-houses  are 
competing  to  supply  the  demand  of  this  great  market.  The 
most  attractive  as  well  as  the  most  promising  indication  of 
the  healthful  progress  of  Chicago  is  given  in  the  quantities 
and  character  of  the  books  offered  for  sale. 

The  book-houses,  the  shelves  of  which  are  crowded  with 
the  best  literature,  are  not  exotic.  They  come  in  obedience 
to  the  law  of  demand  and  supply.  All  our  leading  publish- 
ing houses  have  their  lists  of  publications  completely  repre- 
sented, and  Chicago  itself  is  rapidly  becoming  second  only 
to  New  York  as  a  distribution  point.  The  demand  for  for- 
eign books,  for  costly  books,  for  valuable  books,  is  very 
great.  You  see  in  these  large  establishments  an  assortment 
almost  as  large  and  valuable  as  is  to  be  found  in  any  of  our 
Atlantic  cities.  Here  have  been  sold  over  three  thousand  sets 
of  Appleton's  Encyclopaedia,  in  sixteen  volumes ;  and  into 


76  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPKISE. 

this  market  several  hundred  sets  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Bri- 
tannica,*m  twenty-two  volumes,  worth  two  hundred  dollars 
a  set,  have  found  their  way  We  were  surprised  to  find  here 
such  works,  for  example,  as  Robertson's  Holy  Land,  the 
works  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  of  Hogarth,  Gilray,  Dore, 
Jameson,  Myrick,  and  many  others,  at  prices  varying  from 
one  hundred  to  four  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  each.  We 
vvere  surprised,  too,  to  read  in  a  Chicago  newspaper  the 
programme  of  a  course  of  twenty-four  lectures  to  be  deliv- 
ered in  the  French  language  Allied  to  the  book  business 
is  the  news  business,  which  is  not  the  least  among  the  note- 
worthy things  of  this  city.  The  business  itself  is  an  out- 
growth of  the  express  business,  which,  by  its  ramifications 
and  punctuality,  has,  notwithstanding  its  extortionate  charges, 
been  a  great  public  servant.  The  express  has  opened  in 
almost  every  town,  certainly  in  almost  every  respectable 
village,  a  news  stand ;  and  the  influence  of  these  cheap 
establishments  in  the  diffusion  of  intelligence  will  be  the 
duty  of  some  future  historian  to  estimate. 

The  truth  is,  that  much  of  the  best  young  brain,  taste, 
and  civilization  of  the  country  has  gone  to  the  Northwest ; 
and  Chicago,  besides  supplying  it  with  an  annual  fifty  mil- 
lions of  dollars'  worth  of  dry  goods,  and  no  end  of  boards, 
to  minister  to  its  nobler  needs,  and  distribute  over  the 
country  ten  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  books  At  Chicago, 
the  other  day,  fifty  graduates  of  Yale,  all  residents  of  the 
city,  were  gathered  about  one  table. 

The  traveller  who  stays  over  a  Sunday  in  Chicago  wit- 
nesses as  complete  a  suspension  of  labor  as  in  Boston  or 
Philadelphia.  A  great  majority  of  the  eager  and  busy  pop- 
ulation on  that  day  resigns  itself  to  the  influence  of  its 
instructors ;  and  two  hundred  churches  are  well  filled  with 
attentive  people.  The  social  life  of  the  people  centres  in 


WONDERFUL   GROWTH   OF   CHICAGO.  77 

their  churches.  Those  superb  church  edifices  in  "Wabash 
Avenue  are  not  merely  for  the  assembling  of  a  congregation 
on  Sunday ;  they  are  rather  religious  club-houses,  and  some 
of  them  are  provided  with  a  complete  kitchen  and  restaurant 
apparatus,  and  contain  extensive  suites  of  apartments,  in 
which,  twice  a  month,  the  ladies  give  an  entertainment  to 
the  congregation  The  Sunday-school  rooms  are  made  in- 
viting by  pictures,  elegant  furniture,  and,  in  some  instances, 
by  fountains  and  natural  flowers  In  no  city  of  the  United 
States  are  the  local  benevolent  operations  of  the  churches 
carried  on  with  such  sustained  vigor,  and  on  such  a  thor- 
ough, far-reaching  system,  as  in  Chicago  There  is  one 
mission  Sunday-school  there  which  gathers  every  Sunday 
afternoon  a  thousand  poor,  neglected  children  into  apart- 
ments replete  with  all  the  best  modern  apparatus  of  instruc- 
tion, and  full  of  pleasing  objects.  At  Chicago  it  is  evident 
that  the  people  are  rapidly  learning  and  fulfilling  the  final 
purpose  of  a  Christian  church ,  which  is  not  the  promulga- 
tion of  barren  and  dividing  opinions,  but  the  diffusion  among 
the  whole  community  of  the  civilization  hitherto  enjoyed 
only  by  a  few  favored  families. 

Nowhere  in  the  world  are  there  such  striking  proofs  of 
the  vigor  and  power  of  Christianity  as  in  this  new  prairie 
town.  Here,  far  inland,  on  the  shores  of  this  blue  lake, 
amid  these  grain  mountains,  these  miles  of  timber,  this 
entanglement  of  railroads,  this  mighty  host  of  new-comers, 
even  here  it  is  still  the  voice  from  Palestine,  coming  across 
so  many  centuries,  that  delivers  the  needed  message  :  "Eest 
not,  Chicago,  in  planks,  nor  in  grain,  nor  in  railroads,  nor 
in  infinite  pork.  These  are  but  means  to  an  end.  Never 
mind  about  cutting  out  St.  Louis  ;  try  only  which  shall  do 
most  for  the  civilization  of  the  prairie  world."  Chicago  is 
not  inattentive  to  this  message,  and  is  learning  to  interpret 


78  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

it  aright.  Those  beautiful  temples,  those  excellent  schools, 
those  local  benevolences,  that  innocent  social  life,  those 
ceaseless  battlings  with  vice,  that  instinct  of  decoration,  that 
Conscientiously  conducted  press,  those  libraries  and  book- 
stores, all  attest  that  Chicago  does  not  mean  to  laboriously 
champ  the  shells  of  the  nut  of  life,  and  throw  the  kernel 
away.  It  is  our  impression  that  human  nature  there  is  sub- 
ject to  influences  as  favorable  to  its  health  and  progress  as 
in  any  city  of  the  world,  and  that  a  family  going  to  reside 
in  Chicago  from  one  of  our  older  cities  will  be  likely  to  find 
itself  in  a  better  place  than  that  from  which  it  came. 


DESTRUCTION 

AND 

KECONSTKUCTION  OF  CHICAGO. 


SUCH  was  Chicago,  the  metropolis  of  the  prairies,  before 
the  great  catastrophe  of  1871.  The  city  had  continued  to 
prosper,  and  to  expand.  At  the  beginning  of  1871,  the 
population  of  the  place  was  reckoned  at  334,270,  and  the 
number  of  buildings  at  50,000,  valued  at  $620,000,000,  and 
covering  an  area  of  30,000  acres.  Nor  had  there  ever  been 
a  time  when  the  spirit  of  the  people  had  been  more  hopeful 
and  progressive  than  during  that  very  year.  New  railroads 
were  projected.  New  manufactories  were  rising.  More  build- 
ings were  in  course  of  erection  than  ever  before.  The  Chi- 
cago Tribune  had  remarked  upon  the  general  buoyancy  of 
affairs  on  that  memorable  morning  of  October  8th,  a  day  that 
will  never  be  forgotten  in  the  annals  of  the  city.  w  New  build- 
ings," said  The  Tribune,  "are  looming  up  in  every  direction, 
and  the  city's  growth  this  year  has  been  unparalleled." 

But  there  was  a  menacing  peril  in  the  air.  The  autumn 
of  1871,  and,  indeed,  the  whole  summer,  had  been  unusually 
hot  and  dry.  The  reader,  perhaps.,  has  observed  in  the 
northwestern  country,  that  the  air  and  sun  have  a  peculiar 
drying  power,  particularly  at  the  end  of  the  summer.  I 
have,  myself,  while  sitting  on  a  log  in  the  woods  in  the 
northwest,  touched  the  surface  of  the  log  with  the  end  of  a 
lighted  cigar;  and,  passing  the  spot  on  the  following  day, 
have  discovered  the  log  nearly  consumed,  and  still  burning, 
from  that  momentary  contact  with  fire.  A  large  city  where 
most  of  the  houses  are  of  wood  acquires  at  such  a  season 


SO  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

the  character  of  tinder  "or  scorched  paper,  which  needs  littie 
more  than  a  spark  and  a  favoring  breeze  to  set  the  whole  in 
a  blaze.  Such  was  the  condition  of  Chicago  during  the  first 
week  of  October,  1871.'  The  newspapers  had  even  descan- 
ted upon  the  danger.  On  the  very  morning  of  the  great  fire, 
The  Tribune  held  this  language :  "  For  days  past,  alarm 
has  followed  alarm,  but  the  comparatively  trifling  losses  have 
familiarized  us  to  the  pealing  of  the  Court-house  bell,  and 
we  had  forgotten  that  the  absence  of  rain  for  three  weeks 
had  left  every  thing  in  so  dry  and  inflammable  a  condition, 
that  a  spark  might  start  a  fire  which  would  sweep  from  end 
to  end  of  the  city." 

At  nine  o'clock  that  evening,  the  spark  fell.  According 
to  the  report  of  the  time,  the  fire  began  in  a  stable,  wherein 
a  woman  was  milking  a  cow.  The  cow  kicked  over  a  ker- 
osene lamp,  and,  in  a  few  minutes,  the  whole  of  a  squalid 
neighborhood  was  in  flames.  The  story  is  too  familiar  to  re- 
quire repetition  here.  All  that  night  the  fire  burned,  and  a 
considerable  part  of  the  next  day ;  during  which  the  city  of 
Chicago  presented  a  spectacle  of  which  I  suppose  no  concep- 
tion can  be  formed  from  written  words.  A  thousand  grotesque 
and  hideous  incidents  occurred ;  and  there  was  the  strangest 
conceivable  blending  of  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous.  One 
reporter  speaks  of  an  undertaker  with  a  dray-load  of  coffins 
hastening  to  a  place  of  safety ;  and,  unable  to  carry  all  his 
coffins,  employed  half  a  dozen  boys;  and,  giving  each  of 
them  one  to  carry,  took  a  large  one  himself,  and  headed  the 
procession.  The  coffins,  carried  upright,  and  advancing 
along  just  above  the  heads  of  the  crowd,  while  the  carriers 
were  invisible,  presented  a  startling  scene.  Another  writer 
says  :  "  There  was  very  little  smoke  ;  it  burned  too  rapidly , 
or  what  there  was  must  have  been  carried  away  on  the  wind 
The  whole  was  accompanied  by  a  crackling  noise  as  of  aa 


DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION   OF   CHICAGO.         81 

enormous  bundle  of  dry  twigs  burning,  and  by  explosions 
that  followed  each  other  in  quick  succession  on  all  sides." 
w  The  solid  stone  edifices,"  he  remarks,  "  ignited  suddenly 
all  over  in  a  manner  entirely  new  to  me,  just  as  I  have  seen 
paper  do  that  is  held  to  the  fire  until  it  is  scorched  and  breaks 
out  in  a  flame.  The  crowds  who  were  watching  them  greeted 
the  combustion  with  terrible  yells." 

Mr.  Horace  White,  the  Editor  of  "The  Chicago  Tribune," 
whose  office  and  home  were  both  destroyed,  wrote  a  graphic 
account  of  the  spectacle :  "  Billows  of  fire  were  rolling 
over  the  business  palaces  of  the  city  arid  swallowing  up  their 
contents.  Walls  were  falling  so  fast  that  the  quaking  of  the 
ground  under  our  feet  was  scarcely  noticed,  so  continuous 
was  the  reverberation.  Sober  men  and  women  were  hurry- 
ing through  the  streets  from  the  burning  quarter,  some  with 
bundles  of  clothing  *on  their  shoulders,  others  dragging 
trunks  along  the  sidewalks  by  means  of  strings  and  ropes 
fastened  to  the  handles,  children  trudging  by  their  sides  or 
borne  in  their  arms.  Now  and  then  a  sick  man  or  woman 
would  be  observed,  half  concealed  in  a  mattress  doubled  up 
and  borne  by  two  men.  Droves  of  horses  were  in  the  streets, 
moving  under  some  sort  of  guidance  to  a  place  of  safety. 
Vehicles  of  all  descriptions  were  hurrying  to  and  fro,  some 
laden  with  trunks  and  bundles,  and  others  seeking  similar 
loads  and  immediately  finding  them,  the  drivers  making  more 
money  in  one  hour,  than  they  were  used  to  see  in  a  week  or 
a  month." 

One  of  the  most  interesting  narratives  was  that  of  the  Rev- 
erend Robert  Collyer,  the  celebrated  minister  of  Unity 
Church,  a  beautiful  edifice  of  stone,  situated  three  miles  from 
where  the  fire  began.  For  five  or  six  years,  Mr.  Collyer  had 
labored  zealously  to  build  and  pay  for  this  magnificent  tem- 
ple, until  it  stood  in  its  completed  beauty,  a  monument  to 


82  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE. 

his  energy  and  taste.  This  church,  too,  was  destined  to  be 
swept  away.  His  family  had  gone  to  bed  as  usual,  Sunday 
evening,  in  ignorance  of  their  danger,  and  slept  peacefully 
till  half-past  one  in  the  morning,  when  Mrs.  Collyer  was 
awakened  by  the  bright  glare  in  the  sky,  and  the  storm  of 
fire  flakes  sweeping  over  their  quarter  of  the  town.  She 
roused  her  husband.  He  relates  what  followed :  — 

"  Presently  my  little  son  ran  in,  and  said, ' Papa,  the  fire  has 
crossed  at  State  Street.'  I  ran  down  and  found  it  was  so. 
By  daylight  the  north  side  of  the  church  was  heaped  up  with 
the  poor  belongings  of  many  German  families,  while  they 
sheltered  their  children  inside.  Our  own  people  came  also 
and  piled  many  precious  things  in  the  lecture-room,  and  in 
my  study.  Indeed,  we  hindered  nobody ;  all  came  in  who 
would,  and  brought  what  they  had.  The  fire  4;hen  was 
sweeping  up  eastward,  and  a  little  more  westward.  By  this 
time  we  had  begun  to  break  down  the  fences,  and  hammer 
away  at  the  sidewalks  with  our  hands  and  feet,  for  we  had 
no  tools,  except,  I  think,  one  hatchet  and  a  shovel.  A  num- 
ber of  young  men  belonging  to  the  church,  and  some  others 
I  did  not  know,  worked  with  all  their  might." 

Long  the  pastor  hoped  to  save  his  church.  Yet  he  was 
not  without  serious  fears,  and  employed  a  number  of  men 
and  boys  in  carrying  his  library  out  of  doors  into  the  ad- 
jacent park,  himself  assisting  at  the  operation.  He  thus 
continues  the  melancholy  tale  :  "As  I  came  back,  out  of  the 
park  I  saw  a  little  puff  of  black  smoke,  intensely  black,  ris- 
ing above  the  roof  on  the  north  side  of  the  church,  near  the 
tower.  It  rose  up  presently  into  a  great  cloud ;  then  I  knew 
we  were  beaten,  shouted  to  the  men  to  come  out  of  the  cel- 
lar, told  what  women  were  left  to  get  away  with  their  children 
as  fast  as  they  could,  for  the  church  would'  presently  be  i*  ^i 
blaze,  and  either  then,  or  a  little  sooner,  I  think,  I  went 


DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION   OF   CHICAGO.         83 

stairs  into  my  pulpit,  where  I  stood  the  night  before  and 
talked  to  my  people  about  poor,  burnt  Paris,  as  I  saw  it  in 
July,  took  one  great,  mighty  look  at  it,  as  you  look  at  a 
dear  friend  you  know  you  will  never  see  again,  then  I  took 
the  Bible,  came  down  stairs,  locked  my  study-door,  puj;  the 
key  in  my  pocket,  and  came  away.  I  have  the  key  still, 
and  when  we  get  another  Unity  Church,  I  shall  have  a 
lock  made  for  that  key,  and  the  lock  put  on  to  my  study- 
door.'1 

Imagine  such  scenes  as  these  in  every  part  of  the  city, 
during  all  that  night  and  a  portion  of  Monday  morning. 
When  night  fell  on  Monday,  more  than  two  thousand  acres 
of  Chicago  had  been  burned  over.  This  is  equivalent  to  more 
than  three  square  miles.  The.number  of  buildings  destroyed 
was  17,450.  More  than  98,000  persons  were  rendered 
homeless,  and  about  250  had  lost  their  lives  through  the  con- 
flagration. Almost  all  the  important  public  buildings  were 
gone  :  The  Custom  House,  Post  Office,  City  Hall,  Chamber 
of  Commerce,  Armory,  Gas  Works,  most  of  the  great  Rail- 
road Depots,  the  offices  of  nine  daily  papers,  all  the  princi- 
pal Hotels,  the  Opera  House,  the  Theatres,  public  school  edi- 
fices, the  Law  Library,  the  Historical  Library,  a  large 
number  of  private  collections  of  books,  and  all  the  National 
Banks  but  one.  The  total  amount  of  loss  by  the  fire,  in- 
cluding all  the  items,  has  been  estimated  at  three  hundred 
millions  of  dollars,  or  a  little  less  than  half  the  total  value 
of  the  city. 

But  if  the  catastrophe  was  great  beyond  all  previous  expe- 
rience in  the  United  States,  the  spirit  in  which  it  was  met  by 
the  people  of  Chicago  was  far  more  wonderful.  Long 
before  the  ruins  were  cool,  a  business  man  had  stuck  up  a 
shingle  (and  that  shingle  not  his  own)  on  the  ruins  of  hia 
store,  exhibiting  these  words  to  the  passers-by  :  — 


84  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE. 

"ALL  GONE  BUT  WIFE,  CHILDREN,  AND  ENERGY." 

And  that  was  the  spirit  of  the  whole  people.  The  first 
thing,  of  course,  was  to  care  for  those  deprived  of  shelter, 
and  cut  off  from  all  their  usual  sources  of  supply.  Train- 
loads  of  provisions  came  in,  every  hour.  Meetings  were 
held,  committees  organized,  depots  established,  and  a  vast 
machinery  of  relief  speedily  set  in  motion.  Even  while  the 
fire  was  in  full  blaze,  newspaper  men  were  out  seeking  tem- 
porary offices,  and,  on  Wednesday  morning,  The  Tribune 
reappeared,  with  an  account  of  the  great  calamity  in  twelve 
columns,  and  a  short  editorial  that  cheered  the  people  of 
Chicago  like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  which  announces  to  a 
besieged  city  the  approach  of  a  relieving  force  :  — 


CHEER  UP. 

w  In  the  midst  of  a  calamity  without  parallel  in  the  world's 
history,  looking  upon  ashes  of  thirty  years'  accumulations, 
the  people  of  this  once  beautiful  city  have  resolved  that 
CHICAGO  SHALL  RISE  AGAIN!" 

And  so  on,  for  a  half  a  column,  every  paragraph  equally 
appropriate  to  the  occasion.  The  other  journals 'were  not 
backward  in  sounding  the  same  cheery  note.  The  very  next 
morning  they  had  the  satisfaction  of  announcing  that  a 
larger  percentage  of  the  insurance  would  be  paid  than  the 
most  sanguine  had  dared  to  anticipate,  and  that  twelve  of  the 
Banks  had  secured  temporary  quarters,  and  would  at  once 
resume  business. 

But  the  crowning  marvel  of  this  event  was  the  manner  in 
which  Christendom  came  to  the  help  of  the  stricken  city. 
As  the  news  reached  cities  and  towns,  there  was  no  thought 
but  instantly  to  organize  relief.  Milwaukee  heard  the  news 


DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION   OF   CHICAGO.         85 

on  Monday  morning,  and,  before  night  closed,  two  cars 
laden  with  cooked  provisions  had  reached  Chicago.  From 
Saint  Louis  and  all  the  places  within  a  day's  journey,  food 
and  supplies  of  every  kind  were  despatched  with  the  great- 
est promptitude  ;  and,  as  soon  as  the  first  needs  of  the  people 
had  been  supplied,  unprecedented  subscriptions  of  money 
were  made.  Saint  Louis  sent  five  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
and  Cincinnati,  I  believe,  not  less.  In  New  York  half  a 
million  was  raised  in  the  first  thirty  hours,  which  was  in- 
creased in  two  weeks  to  more  than  two  millions.  A.  T. 
Stewart  gave  fifty  thousand  dollars,  and  Robert  Bonner  ten 
thousand.  Philadelphia  contributed  more  than  half  a  million, 
and  Boston  about  the  same.  Pittsburg  and  Louisville  gave 
a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  each.  Detroit  raised  thirty-five 
thousand  at  one  meeting.  Cleveland,  besides  a  large  gift  in 
money,  sent  twenty-three  car-loads  of  supplies  within  twenty- 
four  hours  after  hearing  of  the  disaster.  Brooklyn  contrib- 
uted in  the  first  forty-eight  hours  one  hundred  and  twelve 
thousand  ;  Buffalo,  a  hundred  thousand,  and,  indeed,  almost  all 
the  cities,  towns,  and  villages  of  the  country,  in  their  propor- 
tion. From  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  munificent  do- 
nations were  forwarded.  London,  Liverpool,  Paris,  Edin- 
burgh, Glasgow,  and  almost  every  place  and  person  of  note 
in  Europe  joined  in  the  movement.  Mr.  Thomas  Hughes 
started  a  scheme  for  replacing  the  Public  Library  of  Chicago, 
and  invited  each  author  to  contribute  a  copy  of  his  works. 
And  all  this  help  was  of  more  use  than  in  supplying  the  phy- 
sical necessities  of  the  people.  It  cheered  and  exalted  their 
minds.  It  gave  them  moral  strength.  It  nerved  them  for 
the  great  task  which  the  calamity  had  imposed  upon  them. 
Affecting  incidents  occurred  on  the  following  Sunday, 
when  the  people,  burned  out  of  their  churches,  gathered  in 
the  midst  of  the  ruins,  and  listened  to  such  words  of  good 


86  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

cheer  as  the  clergymen  could  extemporize.  Robert  Colly er's 
little  speech  was  extremely  touching.  After  reviewing  the 
situation,  he  concluded  with  these  eloquent  words  :  — 

"The  relation  between  us  as  pastor  and  people,  dear 
friends,  has  been  of  the  deepest  and  truest  love  ever  known. 
I  have  always  felt  that  it  was  so,  and  you  have  felt  it  too. 
Now  we  have  received  a  shock  in  this  relation  such  as  we 
never  expected,  such  as  we  never  could  have  expected.  For 
two  or  three  days  after  it  came  I  was  stunned,  and  did  not 
know  what  to  do.  I  could  tell  nothing  about  the  future.  I 
think  I  must  have  been  personally  injured  by  my  long  fight 
with  the  fire.  It  was  a  day  or  two  before  I  began  to  look 
about  and  think  with  myself  what  I  could  say  to  these,  my 
children.  At  last  it  came  to  me  in  one  word  —  and  this  is 
what  I  have  to  say  about  it.  If  you  will  stay  by  me,  I  will  stay 
with  you  ;  if  you  will  work  with  me,  I  will  work  with  you, 
and  we  will  make  the  best  fight  we  can  against  this  adverse 
situation.  I  am  not  going  to  be  a  burden  to  you.  You  can- 
not find  a  cheaper  man  anywhere  than  I  will  be.  I  preached 
seven  years  for  seventy-five  cents  a  year.  I  won't  take  any 
more  than  that  if  you  can't  spare  any  more.  I  don't  mean  to 
task  Unity  Church,  but  I  mean  to  stick  by  you  if  you  will 
stick  by  me.  Never  fear  for  me,  I  can  get  along  well  enough. 
People  will  give  me  more  for  a  lecture  than  they  will  give 
some  folks,  and  if  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  1  can  make 
as  good  horseshoes  and  nails  as  any  man  in  Chicago." 

The  manner  in  which  the  relief  fund  was  adminstered, 
reflects  infinite  credit  upon  the  people  of  Chicago.  As  soon 
as  the  first  necessities  were  supplied,  the  great  object  was  to 
provide  shelter  for  all  those  thousands  of  homeless  families. 
In  two  months  from  the  extinguishment  of  the  fire,  five  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  small,  well-planned,  weather-proof 
shanties  had  been  built  and  furnished,  at  a  cost  of  one  hun- 


DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION   OF   CHICAGO.         87 

dred  and  twenty-five  dollars  each ;  and  provided  with  a  cook- 
ing stove,  with  its  utensils,  a  bedstead  and  bedding,  three 
chairs,  and  one  table.  A  family  of  five  persons  were  fed  and 
warmed  during  the  winter,  at  a  cost  of  about  four  dollars  a 
week,  and  the  fund  was  so  carefully  managed,  that  it  lasted 
in  perfect  sufficiency  during  the  whole  of  a  remarkably  cold, 
snowy  winter.  The  good  sense  and  ingenuity  displayed  in 
this  work  cannot  be  too  highly  commended. 

Three  months  after  the  fire,  when  I  visited  the  city  on  a 
snowy,  cold  day  in  January,  the  site  presented  a  scene  of 
desolation  beyond  even  what  I  had  anticipated.  Miles  and 
miles  and  miles  of  ruins  I  Interminable  rows  of  wooden 
shanties  !  Here  and  there  a  blackened  wall,  a  chimney,  a 
steeple ;  and,  in  several  places,  smoke  was  still  ascending 
from  the  cellars  wherein  masses  of  coal  had  been  stored. 
The  extent  of  the  ruin  was  most  impressive.  I  tired  myself 
all  out  in  walking  against  the  keen  prairie  wind,  and  still  I 
had  not  come  within  sight  of  the  end  of  the  desolation ;  and 
I  crept  back  to  the  hotel,  chilled,  exhausted,  and  depressed. 

A  year  passed.  On  another  winter's  day  I  reached  the 
same  hotel,  and  went  forth  in  the  morning  for  a  walk  about 
the  city.  What  a  change !  Not  many  buildings,  indeed, 
seemed  to  be  quite  finished,  although  many  were  in  a  state  of 
forwardness ;  but,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  and  as  far 
as  the  feet  could  tread,  I  saw  one  thing  —  men  building 
houses.  It  looked  as  though  Chicago  had  gone  universally 
into  the  building  business,  and  was  just  finishing  off  a  con- 
tract for  a  first-rate  metropolis.  Before  the  second  anniver- 
sary of  the  fire,  a  stranger  will  be  obliged  to  seek  traces  of 
it.  A  new  Chicago,  superior  in  all  respects  to  the  old,  wiJl 
stand  upon  the  shore  of  Lake  Michigan. 

When  the  work  of  reconstruction  shall  have  been  comple- 
ted, a  task  a  thousand  times  more  difficult  will  devolve  upon 


88  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

the  people  of  Chicago.  A  system  of  municipal  government 
is  to  be  created  in  the  United  States,  which  will  conduct  the 
affairs  of  a  city  with  an  approximation  to  the  efficiency,  the 
wise  audacity,  and  the  just  economy,  which  a  competent 
man  of  business  displays  in  the  management  of  a  private 
enterprise.  Let  Chicago  undertake  this  noble  work. 

New  York  has  been  so  inundated  and  overwhelmed  with 
foreign  ignorance  and  home-bred  vice,  that  her  citizens  have 
not  had  a  fair  chance.  They  have  struggled  manfully  and 
persistently  against  adverse  circumstances,  and  they  have 
struggled  not  altogether  in  vain,  nor  without  realizing  good 
hopes  for  the  future  of  the  city.  Philadelphia,  too,  has  a 
vast  and  portentous  predominance  of  ignorant  voters,  drawn 
into  her  midst  by  her  ever-growing  manufacturers.  Boston 
and  Baltimore  are,  perhaps,  not  yet  ripe  for  radical  changes, 
and  are  too  firmly  set  in  ancient  ways  to  discard  enough  of 
the  old,  and  adopt  bold  measures  wholly  untried. 

Chicago  is  young,  and  untrammelled  by  ancient  precedent. 
She  dares  look  this  problem  of  city  government  in  the  face, 
and  there  is  practical  intellect  enough  in  the  city  to  solve  it. 
When  a  man  in  Chicago  is  going  to  start  a  factory  or  build 
a  house,  he  inquires  how  other  people  have  started  factories 
and  built  houses,  not  for  the  purpose  of  following  their  ex- 
ample, but  with  a  view  to  ascertain  how  much,  and  in  how 
many  ways,  he  can  improve  upon  their  methods.  It  is  in 
that  spirit  that  Chicago  men  and  women  (for  women,  too, 
will  give  their  aid)  must  undertake  the  business  of  devising 
a  city  government  that  shall  keep  out  scallawags  and  scoun- 
drels from  the  City  Hall,  and  put  in  their  place  men  of 
brains  and  principle. 

Our  cities  perish  for  lack  of  intelligent  government. 
Opportunities  are  not  improved.  Life  is  rendered  burthen- 
some  and  unpleasing.  Countless  myriads  of  human  beings 


DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION   OF   CHICAGO.         89 

are  huddled  together,  and  pass  their  lives  in  a  closeness  of 
contiguity  that  makes  civilization,  and  even  decency,  impos- 
sible; and  they  leave  their  miserable  abodes  for  their  daily 
work,  only  to  get  into  vehicles  more  densely  packed  with 
living  flesh  than  the  cars  in  which  pigs  are  conveyed  to  mar- 
ket. There  are  a  thousand  men  in  Chicago  capable  of  recti- 
fying the  worst  of  these  evils  in  two  years,  if  only  they  pos- 
sessed the  requisite  authority,  and  could  surround  themselves 
with  intelligent  and  efficient  assistance. 

The  new  constitution  of  Illinois  is  now  confessed  to  be, 
and  probably  is,  the  most  advanced  and  best  working  in- 
strument of  the  kind  that  man  has  yet  contrived.  The  fact 
that  it  abolishes  special  legislation,  would  alone  stamp  it 
superior  to  the  constitutions  of  other  States.  The  citizens 
of  Chicago  have  but  to  bring  to  the  formation  of  municipal 
government  the  good  sense  and  mental  independence  which 
produced  their  State  constitution,  in  order  to  frame  a  system 
that  will  go  round  the  world,  converting  unclean,  corrupt, 
and  cheerless  cities  into  places  bright  with  verdure,  with 
ample  room  for  virtuous  and  happy  life,  and  magnificent 
with  the  triumphs  of  all  the  arts. 


THE  FOUNDER  OF  VASSAE  COLLEGE. 


How  immeasurable  the  consequences  of  one  good  action ! 
I  was  struck  with  this  upon  reading,  some  time  ago,  President 
John  H.  Raymond's  interesting  account  in  the  "  Galaxy  "  of  tke 
late  Matthew  Vassar,  the  founder  of  the  College  for  Young 
Ladies  at  Poughkeepsie,  the  first  institution  of  the  kind  ever 
attempted.  I  have  walked  over  the  edifice  erected  by  the 
munificence  of  this  man,  — an  enormous  building,  in  the  style 
of  the  Tuileries  at  Paris.  If  it  were  as  easy  to  create  a 
serviceable  college  as  it  is  to  construct  a  fine  building,  we 
could  already  pronounce  Matthew  Yassar  a  benefactor  of 
man.  The  college,  however,  is  still  an  experiment.  When 
the  young  ladies  educated  by  it  are  wives  and  mothers,  and 
have  outlived  the  illusions  of  youth,  they  will  be  able,  per- 
haps, to  decide  whether  the  instruction  they  received  at  the 
college  was  such  as  to  give  them  real  help  in  contending 
with  the  difficulties  of  life,  —  the  kind  of  help  a  woman  needs 
when  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  a  household  depend  upon 
her.  Meanwhile,  one  thing  is  certain :  The  motive  which 
induced  Mr.  Yassar  to  found  the  college  was  altogether 
humane  and  admirable. 

But  I  was  speaking  of  the  way  in  which  one  good  act  leads 
to  another.  It  was  three  little  words  on  a  monument  which 
put  the  thought  into  Matthew  Yassar's  heart  of  giving  away 
some  of  his  spare,  money  for  the  benefit  of  his  race.  He 
was  standing  in  the  quadrangle  of  Guy's  Hospital  in  London, 


THE   FOUNDER   OF   VASSAR   COLLEGE.  91 

looking  at  the  bronze  statute  of  the  founder  of  that  cele- 
brated institution,  — the  most  extensive  of  its  kind,  I  believe, 
in  England.  The  inscription  upon  the  pedestal  of  the 
statue  is  as  follows :  — 

THOMAS  GUT, 
Sole  Founder  of  this  Hospital, 

IN  HIS  LIFETIME. 
A.  D.,  1726. 

The  words  that  arrested  his  attention,  and  sunk  into  his 
mind,  were  these:  "In  his  Lifetime"  They  were  not 
exactly  true,  however.  Thomas  Guy  did  indeed  build  the 
hospital  in  his  lifetime,  at  a  cost  of  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars ;  but  the  million  dollars  that  may  be  said  to  have 
founded  it,  he  left  in  his  will. 

"When  Matthew  Vassar  read  these  words  he  was  fifty-three 
years  of  age,  —  a  rich  brewer,  from  Poughkeepsie  on  the 
Hudson,  who  was  making  the  tour  of  Europe.  His  father ,. 
an  English  wool-grower,  emigrated  in  1796,  and  settled  on 
the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  where,  from  being  a  farmer,  he 
became  a  brewer,  making  with  considerable  success  an  arti- 
cle much  approved  in  that  region,  called  the  "Vassar  Ale." 
It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that  Matthew  Yassar,  though 
destined  to  make  a  large  fortune  by  brewing  beer,  had  such 
a  repugnance  to  entering  his  father's  brewery,  that  he  ran 
away  from  home  rather  than  do  so.  The  father,  it  seems, 
was  an  obstinate,  strong-minded,  ignorant  man,  who  thought 
he  had  the  right  to  decide  the  fate  of  his  offspring,  and  gave 
his  son  the  choice  of  being  a  brewer  or  a  tanner.  The  con- 
sequence was,  that  the  boy,  assisted  by  his  mother,  ran  away. 
With  all  his  little  property  tied  up  in  a  cotton  handkerchief, 
he  walked  to  a  ferry  eight  miles  from  Poughkeepsie,  accom- 
panied by  his  mother,  who  there  gave  him  seventy-five  cents 


92  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  her  blessing,  and  stood  crying  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
until  she  saw  the  boy  safely  landed  on  the  opposite  shore. 

Within  twenty-four  hours,  he  had  obtained  a  place  in  a 
country  store  as  boy  of  all  work ;  from  which  he  steadily 
rose,  in  five  years,  by  hard  work  and  faithful  service,  to  the 
place  of  first  clerk.  Reconciled  to  his  father,  and  having 
saved  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  he  returned  home  to 
Poughkeepsie,  and  became  book-keeper  in  his  father's 
brewery. 

I  am  reminded  at  this  point  of  a  remark  made  by  Horace 
Greeley,  several  years  ago,  in  the  "Tribune."  "A  young 
man,"  said  he,  "having  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  his 
own  labor,  who  does  not  save  a  hundred  dollars  by  the  time 
he  is  twenty-one,  will  be  likely  to  carry  a  poor  man's  head 
upon  his  shoulders  all  his  life." 

There  is,  doubtless,  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  this  observa- 
tion. Not  that  a  hundred  dollars  is  so  great  a  matter ;  but 
for  a  young  man  to  save  from  a  small  salary  shows  that  he 
has  the  self-control  which  is  one  of  the  chief  elements  in  a 
great  success  of  any  kind. 

Young  Vassar's  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  however,  was 
soon  swallowed  up  in  the  total  ruin  of  the  whole  family.  In 
a  single  night  the  Yassar  brewery  was  swept  away  by  fire. 
Scarcely  an  article  of  value  was  saved ;  there  was  not  a 
dollar  of  insurance  on  the  property ;  and,  to  crown  the  dis- 
aster, Matthew's  elder  brother,  upon  whom  the  weight  of 
the  business  rested,  lost  his  life  from  the  noxious  gases 
generated  from  a  beer-vat  into  which  he  had  incautiously 
descended. 

His  elder  brother  buried,  his  father  unmanned  by  the 
blow,  a  mother,  sisters,  and  two  younger  brothers  reduced 
from  comparative  affluence  to  destitution,  this  lad  of  nine- 
teen accepted  the  charge  of  restoring  the  fortunes  of  the 


THE   FOUNDER   OF   VASSAR   COLLEGE.  93 

family.  He  saved  from  the  ruins  a  few  kettles,  and  set  up 
a  small  brewery  of  his  own  in  an  unoccupied  dye-house, 
where  he  brewed  one  or  two  barrels  of  beer  at  a  time,  and 
delivered  it  himself  to  his  customers.  He  opened  also  an 
oyster  saloon,  on  a  small  scale,  which  promoted  the  consump- 
tion of  his  beer.  In  the  course  of  a  year  or  two,  a  man  of 
capital  joined  him  in  the  brewing  business,  which  from  that 
time  steadly  increased,  and  soon  extricated  the  family  from 
the  unfortunate  position  to  which  the  fire  had  reduced  them. 
The  principle  on  which  he  conducted  his  business  was  as 
simple  as  it  was  sound.  It  was  to  make  the  best  beer  in 
the  market.  From  an  early  period,  Albany  and  other  towns 
in  that  part  of  New  York  were  noted  for  the  brewing  of  beer, 
most  of  which  was  sold  under  the  familiar  name  of  "  Albany 
Ale."  Vassar's  brewery,  for  thirty  years,  supplied  the  country 
with  a  large  quantity  of  the  best  of  it,  and  he  became  at 
length  one  of  the  richest  brewers  in  the  region  of  the  Upper 
Hudson. 

At  ease  in  his  circumstances,  he  made  honorable  efforts 
to  remedy  the  defects  of  his  early  education.  His  father 
never  learned  to  read,  and  did  not  feel  the  necessity  of 
giving  his  sons  more  than  the  mere  rudiments  of  knowledge. 
Matthew  Vassar  now  became  a  diligent  reader,  and  was  fond 
of  conversing  upon  the  usual  topics  of  educated  society.  At 
fifty-three,  he  gave  himself  the  long-desired  pleasure  of  a 
tour  in  the  old  world,  and  during  his  stay  in  London  it  was 
that  he  read  the  inscription  upon  the  monument  in  Guy's 
Hospital,  as  related  above. 

Having  no  children,  and  few  heirs  of  his  own  kindred,  he 
had  already  determined  to  leave  the  bulk  of  his  large 
estate  to  found  some  charitable  or  useful  institution.  But 
those  words,  In  His  Lifetime,  arrested  his  attention,  and 
moved  him  deeply.  The  purpose  was  rapidly  formed  in  his 


94  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

mind  to  imitate  the  example  of  Thomas  Guy,  and  at  least 
begin  something  while  he  was  yet  living  to  watch  and  con- 
trol it.  But  what  ?  He  meditated  the  question  for  many 
years  before  he  could  arrive  at  a  final  decision. 

On  a  certain  day  in  February,  1861,  sixteen  years  after 
he  had  read  the  inscription  upon  the  monument  of  Thomas 
Guy,  in  a  hotel  at  Poughkeepsie,  in  the  presence  of  twenty 
or  thirty  gentlemen,  he  announced  the  conclusion  which  his 
benevolent  mind  had  reached.  He  entered  the  room  carry- 
ing a  small  tin  box.  After  the  usual  preliminary  exercises 
of  a  public  meeting,  he  arose  to  address  the  company.  He 
was  an  old  man  then,  not  far  from  seventy  years  of  age,  — 
a  stout,  well-preserved,  well-proportioned  man,  with  silvery 
hair,  and  particularly  neat  in  his  attire.  Amid  breathless 
silence,  he  delivered  this  brief  address  :  — 

"Gentlemen,"  said  he,  "as  my  long-cherished  purpose  — 
to  apply  a  large  portion  of  my  estate  to  some  benevolent 
object  —  is  now  about  to  be  accomplished,  it  seems  proper 
that  I  should  submit  to  you  a  statement  of  my  motives, 
views,  and  wishes.  It  having  pleased  God  that  I  should 
have  no  descendants  to  inherit  my  property,  it  has  long 
been  my  desire,  after  suitably  providing  for  those  of  my 
kindred  who  have  claims  upon  me,  to  make  such  a  disposi- 
tion of  my  means  as  should  best  honor  God  and  benefit  my 
fellow-men.  At  different  periods,  I  have  regarded  various 
plans  with  favor ;  but  these  have  all  been  dismissed,  one 
after  another,  until  the  subject  of  erecting  and  endowing  a 
college  for  the  education  of  young  women  was  presented 
for  my  consideration.  The  novelty,  grandeur,  and  benig- 
nity of  the  idea  arrested  my  attention.  The  more  carefully 
1  examined  it,  the  more  strongly  it  commended  itself  to  my 
judgment  and  interested  my  feelings.  It  occurred  to  me 
that  woman,  having  received  from  the  Creator  the  same 


THE   FOUNDER   OF   VASSAR   COLLEGE.  95 

intellectual  constitution  as  man,  has  the  same  right  as  man 
to  intellectual  culture  and  development.  I  considered  that 
the  mothers  of  a  country  mould  the  character  of  its  citizens, 
determine  its  institutions,  and  shape  its  destiny.  Next  to 
the  influence  of  the  mother  is  that  of  the  female  teacher,  who 
is  employed  to  train  young  children  at  a  period  when  im- 
pressions are  most  vivid  and  lasting.  It  also  seemed  to  me 
that,  if  woman  were  properly  educated,  some  new  avenues 
to  useful  and  honorable  employment,  in  entire  harmony 
with  the  gentleness  and  modesty  of  her  sex,  might  be  opened 
to  her.  It  further  appeared  that  there  is  not  in  our 
country,  there  is  not  in  the  world,  so  far  as  is  known,  a 
single  fully  endowed  institution  for  the  education  of  women. 
It  was  also  in  evidence  that,  for  the  last  thirty  years,  the 
standard  of  education  for  the  sex  has  been  constantly  rising 
in  the  United  States  ;  and  the  great,  felt,  pressing  want  has 
been  ample  endowments,  to  secure  to  female  seminaries  the 
elevated  character,  the  stability  and  permanency  of  our  best 
colleges.  And  now,  gentlemen,  influenced  by  these  and 
similar  considerations,  after  devoting  my  best  powers  to  a 
study  of  the  subject  for  a  number  of  years  past ;  after  duly 
weighing  the  objections  against  it,  and  the  arguments  that 
preponderate  in  its  favor ;  and  the  project  having  received  the 
warmest  commendations  from  many  prominent  literary  men 
and  practical  educators,  as  well  as  the  universal  approval  of 
the  public  press,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  estab- 
lishment and  endowment  of  a  College  for  the  Education  of 
Young  Women  is  a  work  which  will  satisfy  my  highest 
aspirations,  and  will  be,  under  God,  a  rich  blessing  to  this 
city  and  State,  to  our  country  and  the  world." 

After  some  further  remarks,  he  placed  the  key  of  the  tin 
box  in  the  hands  of  one  of  the  gentlemen  present,  who  had 
been  appointed  President  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  say- 
ing:— 


96  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

"And  now,  gentlemen  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  I  transfer 
to  your  possession  and  ownership,  the  real  and  personal 
property  which  I  have  set  apart  for  the  accomplishment  of 
my  design." 

The  box  contained  bonds  and  other  securities  amounting 
in  value  to  about  four  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars. 
Before  many  weeks  had  elapsed,  the  construction  of  the 
edifice  was  begun;  but  the  war,  which  broke  out  a  few 
weeks  after  the  transfer  of  the  property,  caused  embarrass- 
ment and  delay  Contracts  made  with  mechanics  and  mer- 
chants in  the  cheap  year  of  1861,  could  not  be  carried  out 
in  the  dear  years  of  1863  and  1864.  Nevertheless,  the  work 
went  on,  and  the  college  was  opened  in  1865.  It  .has  been  in 
operation  now  six  years,  during  which  it  has  been  attended 
by  a  large  number  of  young  ladies  from  all  parts  of  the 
country. 

During  the  scene  described  above,  when  Mr,  Yassar, 
with  such  eloquent  simplicity,  announced  his  purpose,  he 
had  said :  *f  It  is  my  fervent  desire  that  I  may  live  to  see 
the  institution  in  successful  operation." 

He  had  his  wish.  On  three  successive  commencement 
days  he  was  present,  congratulating  pupils  and  chatting  with 
parents,  —  a  blithe  and  healthy  old  man,  as  happy  as  the 
youngest  of  the  company.  On  the  third  commencement 
day,  which  occurred  in  June,  1868,  he  was  again  at  the 
college,  and  met  as  usual  the  Board  of  Trustees.  When  the 
meeting  had  been  organized,  he  began  to  read  his  customary 
annual  address ;  and  as  his  voice  was  somewhat  feeble,  the 
members  gathered  closer  round  his  chair  to  catch  the  old 
man's  words.  He  had  nearly  concluded,  when  his  voice 
faltered,  and  soon  ceased.  The  paper  dropped  from  his 
hand.  His  head  fell  back  upon  his  chair.  He  was  dead.  . 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SCIENCE  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES. 


FOUNDING   OF  HARVARD  AND  YALE. — How  THE    EARLY  PROFESSORS 

WERE  FORMED.  —  CAREER  OF  PROFESSOR   SlLLIMAN. 

ONE  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  of  the  early  history  of 
New  England  is,  that  the  colonists  of  Massachusetts,  only 
six  years  after  the  founding  of  Boston,  should  have  set  about 
establishing  a  College.  Perhaps  the  New  England  historians, 
however,  boast  somewhat  too  much  of  this.  These  people 
had  come  into  the  wilderness  for  the  sole  purpose  of  enjoying 
and  perpetuating  their  peculiar  religion,  one  of  the  most 
essential  features  of  which  was  a  learned  ministry.  But  as 
the  English  Universities  were  under  the  control  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church,  and  the  Nonconformists  in  England  were  per- 
secuted and  discouraged  in  every  way,  there  was  no  reason 
to  expect  that  England  would  long  continue  to  supply  the 
growing  colonies  with  competent  clergymen.  The  colonists, 
therefore,  were  compelled  to  provide  for  this  difficulty,  or 
give  up  the  object  of  their  founding  the  colony.  A  nursery 
for  the  education  of  clergymen  was  one  of  the  necessities 
of  the  situation,  and  the  first  college  was  founded  for  that 
purpose. 

Almost  as  soon  as  the  colony  was  planted,  in  1630,  the 
people  began  to  think  of  rearing  clergymen,  and  a  few  young 
men  were  lodged  in  the  families  of  ministers,  from  whom 
they  received  instruction  in  the  languages  and  theology. 


98  TRIUMPHS   OP   ENTERPRISE. 

But  this  resource  being  manifestly  inadequate,  the  Legisla- 
ture, in  the  sixth  year  of  the  colony's  existence,  when  the 
country  was  threatened  with  an  Indian  war,  and  all  New 
England  contained  but  five  thousand  white  families,  voted 
four  hundred  pounds  toward  the  building  of  a  college.  This 
sum  was  about  as  much  for  the  Massachusetts  of  1636,  as 
ten  millions  of  dollars  would  be  for  the  Massachusetts  of 
1871 

The  next  year,  the  Legislature  appointed  twelve  of  the 
leading  men  to  superintend  the  work,  and  changed  the  name 
of  the  place  where  it  was  appointed  to  be  established,  from 
New  Town  to  Cambridge.  Many  of  the  leading  men  of  the 
colony  had  been  students  at  Cambridge  in  old  England,  and 
they  gave  the  town  this  new  name  in  grateful  recollection 
of  the  happy  days  of  their  youth. 

The  Pequot  war  ensued,  which  obliged  the  colonists  to 
put  forth  all  their  strength,  and  expend  far  more  than  their 
revenue ;  so  that  the  vote  of  the  Legislature  would  have 
probably  remained  inoperative  for  several  years,  but  for  the 
beneficence  of  a  private  individual. 

There  was  then  living  at  Charlestown,  on  the  other  side 
of  Charles  Eiver,  an  invalid  clergyman  named  John  Harvard, 
who  had  brought  with  him  from  England  some  property  and 
a  considerable  number  of  books.  He  had  been  educated  at 
Cambridge,  in  England,  and  had  emigrated  to  Massachusetts 
in  1637,  the  very  year  of  the  Pequot  war,  and  the  year  after 
the  four  hundred  pounds  had  been  voted  for  a  college.  An 
opinion  was  current  at  the  time  that  the  voyage  across  the 
Atlantic  and  a  residence  in  New  England  were  good  for 
consumptives  ;  and  there  is  some- reason  to  believe  that  John 
Harvard,  sharing  this  opinion,  had  removed  to  Massachu- 
setts for  the  restoration  of  his  health. 

He  does  not  appear  to  have  preached  in  America,  nor,  as 


THE   BEGINNINGS    OF    SCIENCE   IN   THE   U.    S.  99 

far  as  we  know,  to  have  contemplated  preaching.  But  after 
struggling  with  disease  for  about  a  year,  he  died  of  con- 
sumption. When  his  will  was  opened,  it  was  found  that  he 
had  left  his  whole  library  of  two  hundred  and  sixty  volumes, 
and  one  half  of '  his  estate,  to  the  proposed  college, — his 
estate  being  worth  nearly  sixteen  hundred  pounds  sterling. 
Provided  thus  with  a  fund  of  nearly  twelve  hundred  pounds, 
the  trustees  went  forward,  erected  a  building,  established 
the  college,  and  conferred  upon  it  the  name  of  its  first  bene- 
factor. 

The  example  of  John  Harvard  was  more  beneficial  even 
than  the  money  which  he  bequeathed ;  for  it  inspired  a  large 
number  of  other  persons  with  generous  feelings  toward  the 
infant  institution.  Some  of  the  early  donations  were  very 
simple  and  curious.  A  clergyman,  for  example,  having 
neither  money  nor  lands  to  bestow,  gave  the  college  two 
cows,  valued  at  nine  pounds.  A  gentleman  presented  nine 
shillings'  worth  of  cotton  cloth.  Another  contributed  forty 
shillings  a  year  for  ten  years ;  and  a  farmer,  who  lived  in 
Hartford,  bequeathed  a  hundred  pounds,  to  be  paid  in  corn 
and  meal,  the  college  to  defray  the  cost  of  transportation. 
One  of  the  Bahama  Islands,  for  which  at  a  time  of  famine 
collections  had  been  made  in  New  England,  now,  in  its 
turn,  made  a  collection  for  the  college,  "out  of  their  pov- 
erty," as  they  said,  and  sent  a  hundred  and  twenty-four 
pounds. 

The  college  received  various  gifts  of  land,  from  one  acre 
to  six  hundred  acres,  as  well  as  "  two  shops  "  in  Boston,  let 
by  the  president  of  the  college  for  ten  shillings  a  year. 
Among  the  smaller  gifts,  were  a  piece  of  plate  valued  at 
three  guineas,  a  silver  fruit  dish,  a  sugar  spoon,  a  silver- 
tipped  jug,  "  one  great  salt  and  one  small  trencher  salt,"  one 
pewter  flagon  worth  ten  shillings,  a  pair  of  globes,  a  bell, 


100  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

a  silver  tankard,  two  silver  goblets,  thirty  ewe  sheep  worth 
thirty  pounds,  and  some  horses  which  brought  seventy -two 
pounds. 

A  large  number  of  books,  the  weighty  quartos  and  folios 
of  the  olden  time,  were  presented  to  the  college.  One  Lon- 
don lawyer  gave  eight  chests  of  books  at  one  time,  worth 
four  hundred  pounds  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  a  ^common 
thing  for  clergymen  and  others  to  bequeath  their  libraries  to 
the  College.  Books  were  then  high-priced,  few  in  number, 
and  highly  valued.  We  have  an  interesting  proof  of  this  in 
a  document  which  may  still  be  read  in  the  college  records, 
to  the  effect,  that  a  certain  Henry  Stevens  gave  to  the  Col- 
lege his  Greek  Dictionary,  in  four  volumes,  folio,  on  the 
following  conditions,  to  wit :  that  if  his  son  should  ever 
have  occasion  to  use  the  work,  he  should  have  free  access  to 
it,  and  that  if  "  God  should  bless  the  said  Joshua  with  any 
child  or  children  that  shall  be  students  of  the  Greek  tongue, 
then  the  said  books  above  specified  shall  be  unto  them  deliv- 
ered." It  so  happened  that  the  said  Joshua  had  a  son  who 
studied  Greek,  to  whom  the  Dictionary  was  delivered  on 
demand  accordingly. 

These  voluntary  contributions  being  insufficient,  the  Gov- 
ernment assigned  for  the  support  of  the  College  the  profits 
of  the  ferry  over  the  Charles  River,  and  the  people  were 
called  upon  to  make  an  annual  contribution  to  it,  of  at  least 
one  peck  of  corn!  For  many  years,  however,  the  College 
was  a  heavy  charge  upon  the  people,  and  the  tutors  and 
president  were  most  scantily  and  precariously  maintained. 

A  sad  misfortune  befell  the  institution  at  the  start.  The 
first  president,  Nathaniel  Eaton,  although  an  excellent 
scholar,  proved  to  be  a  man  of  violent  temper  and  cruel 
disposition.  In  all  colleges,  then,  the  president  was  author- 
ized to  inflict  corporeal  punishment  on  the  students ;  and 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE   IN   THE    U.    8.  101 

this  Eaton,  besides  half  starving  his  scholars,  pummelled 
them  so  outrageously  that  even  the  stern  Puritans  of  that 
severe  age  could  not  endure  it. 

"Among  many  of  the  instances  of  his  cruelty,"  says 
Cotton  Mather,  "  he  gave  one  in  causing  two  men  to  hold  a 
young  gentleman,  while  he  so  unmercifully  beat  him  with 
a  cudgel,  that  upon  complaint  of  it  unto  the  court,  in  Sep- 
tember, 1639,  he  was  fined  an  hundred  marks,  besides  a 
convenient  sum  to  be  paid  unto  the  young  gentleman  that 
had  suffered  by  his  unmercifuluess ;  and  for  his  inhumane 
severities  towards  the  scholars,  he  was  removed  from  his 
trust." 

This  was  an  inauspicious  beginning,  and  it  was  some  time 
apparently  before  the  College  recovered  from  the  check 
which  the  unfortunate  choice  of  a  President  gave  it.  Under 
better  men,  however,  the  institution  grew  and  throve,  and 
acquired  so  high  a  reputation  that  Puritan  families  in  Eng- 
land sent  over  their  sons  to  be  educated  in  it. 

The  journal  of  a  Dutch  traveller,  who  made  the  tour  of 
the  American  colonies  when  the  college  was  forty  years  old, 
describes  an  unexpected  scene  which  the  author  witnessed 
at  Harvard  College  in  1680.  The  manuscript  of  this  work 
was  accidentally  discovered,  a  few  years  ago,  in  a  book- 
seller's shop  at  Amsterdam,  by  an  American  citizen,  who 
caused  it  to  be  translated  and  published.  In  this  strange, 
roundabout  way,  we  get  an  interesting  glimpse  of  old  Har- 
vard. The  author  records,  that,  being  at  Boston,  he  started 
one  morning  about  six  o'clock  to  go  to  Cambridge,  to  see 
the  college  and  the  printing-office,  the  latter  a  great  wonder 
then  in  America.  After  being  rowed  across  the  Charles 
River,  he  and  his  companion  lost  their  way,  so  that  they  did 
not  reach  Cambridge  until  eight  o'clock.  He  describes  the 
village  as  being  small,  the  houses  standing  very  much  apart, 


102  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  the  college  building  conspicuous  in  the  midst.  Upon 
approaching  the  college,  they  neither  heard  nor  saw  anything 
remarkable,  until  they  had  got  round  to  the  back  of  the  edi- 
fice; where,  he  says,  "we  heard  noise  enough  in  an  upper 
room  to  lead  my  comrade  to  suppose  they  were  engaged  in 
disputation."  They  entered  and  went  up-stairs,  where  they 
were  met  by  a  gentleman,  who  requested  them  to  walk  into 
the  apartment  whence  the  noise  proceeded. 

"We  found  there,"  our  Dutchman  reports,  "eight  or  ten 
young  fellows  sitting  around  smoking  tobacco,  with  the  smoke 
of  which  the  room  was  so  full,  that  you  could  hardly  see, 
and  the  whole  house  smelt  so  strong  of  it,  that  when  I  was 
going  up  stairs,  I  said  this  is  certainly  a  tavern.  .  .  We 
inquired  how  many  professors  there  were,  and  they  replied 
not  one,  as  there  was  no  money  to  support  one.  We  asked 
how  many  students  there  were.  They  said,  at  first,  thirty,  and 
then  came  down  to  twenty :  I  afterwards  understood  there 
were  probably  not  ten.  They  could  hardly  speak  a  word 
of  Latin,  so  that  my  comrade  could  not  converse  with  them." 

It  was  true  that,  at  the  time  of  this  visit,  there  was  a 
vacancy  in  the  office  of  the  President,  and  that  there  was  no 
one  connected  with  the  college  entitled  to  be  called  Profes- 
sor; the  classes  being  instructed  by  tutors.  Nevertheless, 
it  shows  a  want  of  discipline  that  the  students  should  smoke 
so  as  to  make  the  whole  building  smell  like  a  tavern.  One 
of  the  rules  expressly  forbade  the  use  of  tobacco,  "unless 
with  the  consent  of  parents  or  guardians,  and  on  good  reason 
first  given  by  a  physician,  and  then  in  a  sober  and  private 
manner."  But  among  Puritans,  as  among  other  people, 
"  when  the  cat 's  away  the  mice  will  play." 

As  to  their  not  being  able  to  speak  Latin,  they  probably 
could  not  understand  that  language  as  pronounced  by  a 
Dutchman.  The  first  rule  of  the  college  was,  that  no  student 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE   IN  THE   U.    8.  103 

should  be  admitted  to  the  Freshman  class,  until  he  could 
translate  such  Latin  as  that  of  Cicero  at  sight,  and  "  speak 
true  Latin  in  verse  and  prose."  If  this  rule  were  strictly 
observed  at  the  present  day,  every  college  in  America  would 
be  empty.  The  students  of  Harvard  were  even  required  to 
speak  Latin  in  their  ordinary  conversation ;  one  of  the  rules 
being,  "  The  scholars  shall  never  use  their  mother  tongue, 
except  that,  in  public  exercises  of  oratory,  or  such  like,  they 
be  called  to  make  them  in  English." 

Another  curious  rule  was  the  following :  "  Every  scholar 
shall  be  called  by  his  surname  only,  till  he  is  invested  with 
his  first  degree,  except  he  be  a  fellow-commoner,  or  knight's 
eldest  son,  or  of  superior  nobility."  Another  rule  reads  thus  : 
w  They  shall  honor  their  parents,  magistrates,  elders,  tutors 
and  aged  persons  by  being  silent  in  their  presence  (except 
they  be  called  on  to  answer) ,  not  gainsaying ;  showing  all 
those  laudable  expressions  of  honor  and  reverence  in  their 
presence  that  are  in  use,  as  bowing  before  them,  standing 
uncovered,  or  the  like." 

A  very  simple  examination  decided  who  was  worthy  of 
his  Bachelor's  degree.  Every  scholar  was  entitled  to  it  who 
was  found  capable  of  translating  the  Hebrew  Bible  and  the 
Greek  Testament  into  tolerable  Latin ;  but  for  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts,  the  student  was  required  to  possess  a  com- 
petent knowledge  of  logic,  natural  and  moral  philosophy, 
arithmetic,  geometry,  and  astronomy.  Such  was  Harvard 
College  during  the  first  half-century  of  its  existence. 

Then  another  college  began  to  be  talked  of.  Other  settle- 
ments had  attained  importance ;  Hartford  and  New  Haven 
had  been  founded ;  the  supply  of  ministers  was  still  thought 
to  be  inadequate.  And  it  was  deemed  a  hardship  by  the 
people  of  Connecticut  to  be  compelled  to  send  their  sons  so 
far  away  for  education, 

7 


104  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  reader  is  aware,  probably,  that  the  State  of  Connec- 
ticut, though  uot  the  largest  in  the  world,  has  two  capitals, 
Hartford  and  New  Haven.  If  he  reads  on,  he  will  discover 
the  reason  of  this  superfluity ;  for  it  grew  out  of  the  found- 
ing df  Yale  College. 

We  must  go  back  to  the  year  1635,  when  so  large  a  num- 
ber of  emigrants  had  fled  to  Massachusetts  from  persecution 
in  England,  that  the  group  of  settlements  about  Boston  had 
become  over-crowded,  and  people  could  scarcely  subsist 
their  cattle  through  the  long  winters.  At  that  day,  the 
rough-and-ready  mode  of  clearing  laud  since  practised,  by 
merely  felling  the  trees,  burning  off  the  timber,  and  letting 
the  stumps  remain  in  the  ground,  had  not  been  thought  of; 
but  every  one  supposed  that  the  stumps  must  all  be 
grubbed  up  and  destroyed,  before  the  land  could  be  culti- 
vated. By  this  slow  process,  few  farmers  could  clear  more 
than  an  acre  or  two  in  a  year ;  and  but  for  the  fact  that 
there  was  a  great  quantity  of  cleared  land  about  Boston  and 
Salem,  the  Indian  owners  of  which  had  died  of  a  plague 
some  years  before,  the  colonists  could  not  have  subsisted  at  all. 

But  in  1635,  five  years  after  the  settlement  of  Boston,  the 
good  cleared  lands  along  the  coast  were  all  taken  up,  and  a 
number  of  settlers  resolved  to  remove  to  the  beautiful 
meadows  upon  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut  River,  of  which 
glowing  accounts  had  reached  them  from  traders  who  had 
sailed  up  the  Connecticut  for  traffic  with  the  Indians.  Hav- 
ing made  up  their  minds  to  settle  near  the  site  of  the  city 
of  Hartford,  they  chose  a  most  unfortunate  time  for  their 
removal.  It  was  on  the  15th  of  October,  1635,  when  the 
weather  was  already  cold,  that  about  fifteen  families,  num- 
bering sixty  persons,  men,  women  and  children,  with  horses, 
cattle,  and  pigs,  began  their  march  from  the  neighborhood 
of  Boston. 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE    IN   THE   U.    S.  105 

The  distance  is  about  one  hundred  miles,  and  the  whole 
journey  lay  through  a  wilderness,  trackless  and  untrodden. 
There  were  rivers  to  cross,  high  hills  to  surmount,  and 
tangled  swamps  to  get  through.  The  sufferings  of  the  little 
band  were  severe  and  long ;  and  when  at  length  they  arrived 
at  the  shores  of  the  broad  Connecticut,  they  were  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  river,  and  at  a  loss^how  to  get  their  cattle 
over.  By  the  15th  of  November,  while  they  were  still 
engaged  in  getting  their  cattle  across,  the  winter  set  in  with 
such  severity  that  the  stream  was  frozen  over,  and  there 
was  deep  snow  upon  the  ground.  A  whole  month  had  been 
consumed,  and  there  was  scarcely  a  hut  yet  erected  which 
could  shelter  the  young  children  from  the  withering  blasts  of 
this  premature  winter. 

It  was  a  season  of  misery,  famine,  and  death.  Two  ves- 
sels laden  with  their  goods  were  wrecked  on  the  voyage 
round,  and  all  on  board  were  lost.  By  the  end  of  November, 
"the  situation  was  so  appalling,  that  thirteen  persons  went 
back  through  the  woods  starving  to  Boston,  only  saved 
from  perishing  in  the  wilderness  by  the  kindness  of  the 
Indians.  Seventy  more,  in  the  very  middle  of  the  winter, 
contrived  to  make  their  way  back  by  water.  Those  who 
remained  lived  on  acorns,  nuts,  game,  and  what  little  corn 
they  could  get  from  the  Indians.  Amid  sufferings  seldom 
paralleled  even  in  the  early  history  of  New  England,  the 
State  of  Connecticut  was  planted. 

With  returning  spring,  however,  relief  was  afforded  to  the 
settlers ;  the  fugitives  went  back ;  Hartford  was  founded  ; 
and  new  colonists  came  in.  After  the  Pequot  war  of  1636, 
the  settlements  on  the  fertile  shores  of  the  beautiful  Connec- 
ticut flourished  exceedingly,  and  the  province  soon  acquired 
some  little  importance. 

It  was  in  old  Connecticut  that  the  American  method  of 


106  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

clearing  land  was  first  hit  upon ;  and,  without  that  inven- 
tion, the  American  wilderness  never  could  have  been  cleared 
fast  enough  to  receive  the  tide  of  emigration  which  set 
toward  it. 

The  fact,  though  not  mentioned  by  any  historian  of  note, 
is  of  so  much  importance  that  I  will  copy  here  the  original 
record  of  it,  as  contained  in  an  old  manuscript  history  of 
Guilford,  Connecticut,  written  one  hundred  years  ago  by  the 
minister  of  that  town,  Eev.  Thomas  Kuggles,  and  published 
a  year  or  two  since  in  the  "  New  York  Historical  Magazine/' 
The  passage  has  historical  value. 

"  It  was  a  great  many  years  the  planters  were  chiefly  confined  to 
the  lands  cleared  by  the  Indians,  near  the  sea,  in  their  husbandry. 
They  indeed  early  made  a  law  that  every  planter  should  clear  up 
yearly  half  an  acre  of  new  land.  This  was  a  hard  piece  of  labor. 
It  was  all  done  by  hand  —  by  digging  and  stubbing  up  the  trees 
and  small  growths  by  the  roots  —  although  they  quite  spoiled  the 
land  by  it ;  but  they  knew  of  no  other  way,  and  it  was  a  severe 
penalty  to  be  guilty  of  transgressing  this  town  order.  It  was  a 
long  time  before  the  present  way  of  clearing  new  land  was  prac- 
tised. The  first  adventurer  herein  was  John  Scranton,  upon  the 
top  of  a  good  hill  of  land,  now  the  property  of  Mr.  Ruggles.  He 
cleared  about  an  acre. 

"  The  inhabitants  were  amazed,  first  at  his  courage,  that  he 
would  venture  so  far,  about  two  miles,  into,  the  wood  to  labor  ;  then 
at  his  folly,  that  he  should  think  a  crop  of  wheat  would  grow  in 
such  a  way.  So  strange  are  new  things  to  the  world.  But  they 
were  perfectly  astonished  when  they  saw  twenty  bushels  of  the 
best  of  wheat  reaped  at  harvest  from  only  three  pecks  of  seed  on 
an  acre  of  ground  sown  in  that  manner  by  such  tillage. 

"Experience,  from  whence  almost  all  useful  knowledge,  espe- 
cially in  husbandry,  is  derived,  convinced  them  of  the  truth  ;  and 
the  same  spirit  spread,  and  the  wood-lands  soon  became  fields  of 
wheat." 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF    SCIENCE   IN   THE    U.    8.  107 

Nine  years  after  that  winter  march  through  the  wilderness, 
the  Connecticut  colonists  began  to  contribute  a  little  toward 
the  support  of  Harvard  College,  each  family  being  requested 
by  the  legislature  to  give  one  peck  of  wheat  per  annum. 
When  the  colony  was  seventeen  years  old,  a  project  was 
seriously  discussed  of  founding  a  college  of  their  own ;  but 
it  was  thought  best,  for  a  while  longer,  for  all  New  England 
to  unite  in  supporting  Harvard.  In  the  year  1700,  when 
Connecticut  contained  twenty-eight  towns,  and  fifteen  thou- 
sand inhabitants,  the  clergy  of  the  colony  formed  themselves 
into  a  society  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  college 
in  Connecticut.  There  was  a  meeting  of  this  society 
soon  after,  to  which  each  member  brought  from  his  own 
precious  little  store  of  volumes  those  which  he  thought 
suitable,  and  laying  them  upon  a  table,  said  these  words : 
44 1  give  these  books  for  the  founding  of  a  college  in  this 
colony." 

The  number  of  volumes  thus  collected  was  only  forty ; 
but  they  were  all  solid  folios  of  the  olden  time.  The 
trustees  took  possession  of  them,  deposited  them  in  a 
safe  place,  and  they  formed  the  nucleus  around  which 
gathered  the  venerable  institution  now  called  Yale  Col- 
lege. Other  books  were  added ;  a  little  money  was  given ; 
and  one  gentleman  presented  six  hundred  and  thirty-seven 
acres  of  land,  and  engaged  to  supply  all  the  glass  and 
nails  that  should  be  necessary  to  build  the  college.  The 
legislature  agreed  to  give  sixty  pounds  a  year  toward  the 
support  of  the  institution,  and  this  they  did  for  fifty-four 
years. 

The  college  was  ready  to  receive  pupils  in  the  spring  of 
1702.  The  first  who  entered  was  Jacob  Hemmingway,  who, 
from  March  to  September,  remained  the  only  student.  But 
in  September,  the  number  of  students  was  increased  to  eight ; 


108  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

a  tutor  was  appointed  to  aid  the  rector;  and  the  college 
entered  upon  its  long  and  honorable  career. 

One  of  the  earliest  settlers  of  New  Haven  was  an  English 
gentleman,  named  Thomas  Yale,  who  arrived  in  1638,  and 
after  remaining  twenty  years  in  the  colony,  went  back  to 
England,  returning  to  America  no  more.  He  took  back  with 
him  to  his  native  land  his  son,  Elihu  Yale,  a  little  boy  ten 
years  of  age,  born  in  New  Haven.  This  son,  after  growing 
to  manhood  in  England,  went  out  to  seek  his  fortune,  as  so 
many  young  Englishmen  did,  and  do,  to  the  East  Indies, 
where  he  married  an  heiress  ;  and,  returning  to  England,  was 
chosen  Governor  of  the  East  India  Company.  That  he  was 
a  man  interested  in  learning,  if  not  possessed  of  it,  we  may 
infer  from  the  fact  that  he  was  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society, 
—  that  honorable  institution  to  which  Newton  and  Franklin 
communicated  their  discoveries. 

Hearing  what  was  going  forward  in  his  native  Connecticut, 
he  sent  over,  from  time  to  time,  donations  of  books,  money, 
and  merchandise,  for  the  benefit  of  the  new  college.  Some 
of  his  gifts  arriving  just  in  time  to  aid  the  trustees  in  the 
construction  of  a  new  building  at  New  Haven,  they  named  , 
the  edifice  Yale  College,  and  this  name  was  finally  assigned, 
by  common  usage,  to  the  institution  itself.  It  was  a  grand 
day  in  New  Haven,  in  September,  1718,  when  the  first  Com- 
mencement took  place  after  the  completion  of  this  building. 
In  the  presence  of  the  Governor,  the  legislature,  the  judges, 
the  clergy,  and  a  great  concourse  of  spectators  from  far  and 
near,  one  of  the  trustees  read  a  memorial  in  pompous  Latin, 
which  concluded  thus  :  — 

"  We,  the  trustees,  having  the  honor  of  being  intrusted  with  an 
affair  of  so  great  importance  to  the  common  good  of  the  people,  do, 
with  one  consent,  agree,  determine,  and  ordain,  that  our  College 
House  shall  be  called  by  the  name  of  its  munificent  patron,  and 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE   IN   THE   U.    8.  109 

shall  be  named  YALE  COLLEGE  :  that  this  province  may  keep  and 
preserve  a  lasting  monument  of  such  a  generous  gentleman,  who, 
by  so  great  benevolence  and  generosity,  has  provided  for  their 
greatest  good,  and  the  peculiar  advantage  of  the  inhabitants  both 
in  the  present  and  future  ages." 

On  this  joyful  occasion  an  oration  was  pronounced  by  one 
of  the  trustees,  in  which  he  extolled  the  generosity  of  Yale 
in  the  most  glowing  terms.  Eight  students  received  their 
bachelor's  degree,  and  the  ceremony  concluded  with  an  ora- 
tion in  Latin,  pronounced  by  the  Governor  of  the  State,  in 
which  the  benevolence  of  Mr.  Yale  was  again  warmly  com- 
mended. 

It  remains  to  be  told  how  Connecticut  came  to  be  blest 
with  two  capitals.  As  soon  as  the  college  was  determined 
upon  in  1700,  the  question  arose,  and  was  discussed  with  the 
energy  and  heat  with  which  such  questions  usually  are,  In 
what  town  shall  it  be  situated  ?  The  institution  was  begun 
at  Saybrook,  and  was  not  finally  established  at  New  Haven 
until  1718,  which  was  sixteen  years  after  the  first  student 
entered.  This  removal,  as  the  reader  may  imagine,  was 
keenly  resented,  not  only  by  Saybrook,  but  by  other  towns 
which  had  hoped  to  be  chosen  as  the  site  of  the  college, 
particularly  Hartford.  To  reconcile  Hartford  to  the  disap- 
pointment, the  legislature  agreed  to  build  a  State  House 
there,  as  they  said,  "  to  compensate  for  the  college  at  New 
Haven"  They  tried  to  appease  Saybrook  by  voting  twenty- 
five  pounds  sterling  for  the  use  of  its  school.  But  Saybrook 
was  irreconcilable.  When  the  sheriff,  by  order  of  the  trus- 
tees, attempted  to  remove  the  library  to  New  Haven,  a  riot 
ensued,  in  the  course  of  which  two  hundred  and  fifty  vol- 
umes were  conveyed  away  to  parts  unknown,  and  never 
recovered. 

Elihu  Yale  lived  to  the  age  of  seventy-three  years,  dying 


HO  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

in  1721,  and  was  buried  at  Wrexham,  in  Wales.  The  epi- 
taph on  his  tombstone  is  still  legible.  After  the  date  of  his 
birth  and  death  these  lines  follow  :  — 

Born  in  America,  in  Europe  bred, 

In  Africa  travelled,  and  in  Asia  wed, 

Where  long  he  lived  and  thrived :  at  London,  dead. 

Much  good,  some  ill,  he  did :    so  hope  all 's  even, 

And  that  his  soul  through  mercy 's  gone  to  Heaven. 

You  that  survive  and  read,  take  care 

For  this  most  certain  exit  to  prepare : 

For  only  the  actions  of  the  just 

Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust. 

The  time  came  when  the  enlightened  minds  connected 
with  Harvard  and  Yale,  sharing  the  modern  enthusiasm  for 
science,  felt  the  incompleteness  of  the  old  college  course.  I 
have  often  admired  the  sensible  manner  in  which  they  pro- 
ceeded to  form  Professors  of  science,  when  they  could  not 
find  any.  That,  for  example,  was  an  important  conversation 
which  occurred  in  1801,  under  the  noble  elms  of  New 
Haven,  between  Dr.  D wight,  President  of  Yale  College,  and 
young  Silliman,  tutor  and  student  of  law. 

Benjaman  Silliman,  twenty-two  years  of  age,  of  May- 
flower ancestry,  and  the  son  of  a  Revolutionary  general,  was 
one  of  the  most  promising  young  men  of  New  England,  and 
he  would  have  begun  the  profession  of  the  law  with  every 
advantage  that  can  be  derived  from  birth,  connections,  and 
natural  talent.  Dr.  Dwight,  theologian  as  he  was,  was  a 
man  of  vigorous,  inquisitive  mind,  interested  in  branches  of 
knowledge  beyond  the  range  of  a  college  founded  and  main- 
tained chiefly  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  New  England 
with  clergymen.  The  young  man  cherished  for  the  Presi- 
dent the  profoundest  veneration. 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE   IN  THE   U.   8.  Ill 

w  When  I  hear  him  speak,"  he  wrote  in  his  college  diary, 
"  it  makes  me  feel  like  a  very  insignificant  being,  and  almost 
prompts  me  to  despair;  but  I  am  reencouraged  when  I 
reflect  that  he  was  once  as  ignorant  as  myself,  and  that  learn- 
ing is  only  to  be  acquired  by  long  and  assiduous  application." 

He  had  just  received  an  invitation  to  take  charge  of  an 
academy  in  Georgia,  and  was  deliberating  on  the  proposal 
on  the  College  Green,  under  the  beautiful  elms,  on  a  warm 
July  morning,  when  he  met  President  Dwight  and  asked 
his  advice. 

"  I  advise  you  not  to  go  to  Georgia,"  said  the  President. 
"I  would  not,  voluntarily,  unless  under  the  influences  of  some 
commanding  moral  duty,  go  to  live  in  a  country  where 
slavery  is  established.  You  must  encounter,  moreover,  the 
dangers  of  the  climate,  and  may  die  of  a  fever  within  two 
years.  I  have  still  other  reasons  which  I  will  now  proceed 
to  state  to  you." 

He  told  the  young  man  that  the  corporation  of  the  college 
had,  several  years  before,  at  his  recommendation,  resolved 
to  establish  a  professorship  of  Chemistry  and  Natural  His- 
tory as  soon  as  the  college  could  afford  to  pay  another  salary. 
The  time  had  come ;  but  there  was  a  difficulty  in  the  way. 
In  the  United  States  there  was  then  not  a  single  individual 
competent  to  fill  such  a  professorship,  and  there  were  objec- 
tions to  the  employment  of  a  foreigner,  who,  whatever  his 
scientific  knowlege,  could  not  be  expected  to  harmonize  with 
the  college  system  so  well  as  a  native  of  the  soil  and  a  grad- 
uate of  the  institution. 

"  I  see  no  way,"  added  he,  w  but  to  select  a  young  man 
worthy  of  confidence,  and  allow  him  time,  opportunity,  and 
pecuniary  aid,  to  enable  him  to  acquire  the  requisite  science 
and  skill,  and  wait  for  him  until  he  shall  be  prepared  to 
begin." 


112  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Dr.  D wight  concluded  by  offering  to  recommend  to  the 
corporation  the  appointment  of  his  young  friend.  The  tutov 
was  startled  at  a  proposal  so  novel  and  unexpected,  the 
acceptance  of  which  would  compel  him  to  renounce  his  long- 
cherished  ambition  of  a  distinguished  career  at  the  bar,  and 
to  enter  upon  a  course  of  life  of  which  there  was  no  Ameri- 
can example.  He  stood  confounded  and  speechless.  The 
President,  perceiving  his  embarrassment,  continued  to  enlarge 
upon  the  scheme. 

"  I  could  not,"  he  said,  "  propose  to  you  a  course  of  life 
and  of  effort  which  would  promise  more  usefulness,  or  more 
reputation.  The  profession  of  law  does  not  need  you ;  it  is 
already  full,  and  many  eminent  men  adorn  our  courts  of 
justice.  In  the  profession  which  I  proffer  to  you  there  will 
be  no  rival  here.  The  field  will  be  your  own.  Our  country 
is  rich  in  unexplored  treasures,  and  by  aiding  in  their  devel- 
opment you  will  perform  an  important  public  service,  and 
connect  your  name  with  the  rising  reputation  of  our  native 
land.  Time  will  be  allowed  to  make  every  necessary  pre- 
paration, and  when  you  enter  upon  your  duties  you  will 
speak  to  those  to  whom  the  subject  will  be  new.  You  will 
advance  in  the  knowledge  of  your  profession  more  rapidly 
than  your  pupils  can  follow  you,  and  will  be  always  ahead 
of  your  audience." 

This  view  of  the  subject  strongly  impressed  the  young 
man,  and  he  asked  for  a  few  weeks  for  consideration  and 
consultation  with  friends,  chief  among  whom,  he  records, 
was  "a  wise  and  good  mother."  The  result  was,  that  he 
accepted  the  appointment ;  not,  however,  without  stipulating 
that  he  should  first  pass  his  examination  for  the  bar,  "  as  a 
retreat,  in  case  of  disaster  to  the  college,  from  the  violence 
of  party  spirit."  President  Dwight,  he  explains,  was  "an 
ardent  Federalist  of  the  Washington  school,  and  his  eloquent 


THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   SCIENCE   IN   THE   U.    S.  113 

appeals  excited  the  hostility  of  the  rising  democracy."  In 
1802,  his  appointment  was  announced,  to  the  wonder  of  the 
public,  and  he  soon  began  the  work  of  preparation. 

He  was  almost  totally  ignorant  of  the  sciences  which  he 
had  undertaken  to  teach ;  nor  was  there  a  person  in  New 
England  to  whom  he  could  apply  for  instruction.  He  could 
not  even  find,  nor  did  there  exist,  an  elementary  work  upon 
chemistry  simple  enough  for  a  beginner.  After  his  conver- 
sation with  Dr.  D wight,  he  had  procured  a  few  books  upon 
chemistry,  but  he  could  make  little  of  them,  and  he  found 
it  necessary  to  proceed  to  Philadelphia,  which  was  then,  in 
everything  which  pertained  to  science  and  learning,  the 
metropolis  of  the  country. 

The  means  of  instruction  in  chemistry  were  extremely 
limited  even  there,  consisting  chiefly  of  a  course  of  lectures 
delivered  every  winter  in  a  small,  inconvenient  room  by  one 
of  the  physicians  attached  to  the  medical  school.  The  lab- 
oratory was  a  few  closets  ;  the  apparatus  was  barely  sufficient 
for  beginners ;  and  the  lecturer  was  neither  deeply  versed  in 
the  science  nor  skilful  in  exhibiting  its  laws.  To  the  young 
tutor,  however,  even  the  rudiments  of  chemistry  had  the 
attraction  of  novelty,  and  the  lectures,  as  he  says,  were  a 
treasure  to  him.  An  instance  of  the  lecturer's  want  of  skill 
used  to  be  related  by  Professor  Silliman.  After  informing 
the  class,  one  day,  that  life  could  not  be  sustained  in  hydro- 
gen gas,  a  hen  was  placed  under  a  bell  glass  filled  with 
hydrogen.  The  hen  gasped,  kicked,  and  was  still. 

"There,  gentlemen,"  said  the  lecturer,  "you  see  she  is 
dead." 

He  had  no  sooner  uttered  these  words,  than  the  hen  over- 
turned the  bell  glass  and  flew  screaming  across  the  room, 
flapping  with  her  wings  the  heads  of  the  students,  who 
roared  with  laughter. 


114  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

After  attending  these  lectures  for  two  winters,  and  avail- 
ing himself  of  all  other  means  of  acquiring  knowledge,  he 
returned  to  New  Haven  and  entered  upon  the  duties  of  his 
professorship.  During  his  absence,  a  laboratory  had  been 
constructed  in  one  of  the  new  college  buildings ;  but  such 
complete  ignorance  prevailed  of  chemistry  and  its  require- 
ments, that  the  young  professor  found  his  laboratory  a  gloomy 
cavern,  sixteen  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  ground,  to  which 
access  could  be  gained  only  by  a  trap-door  and  a  ladder.  The 
architect  had  some  confused  notion  that  chemistry  was  one 
of  the  black  arts,  like  alchemy,  with  its  fiery  furnaces,  explo- 
sions, and  incantations.  Confounded  at  the  sight  of  this 
dungeon,  the  young  professor  invited  the  corporation  of  the 
college  to  descend  with  him  into  its  gloomy  depths ;  which 
resulted  in  their  authorizing  him  to  make  such  alterations  as 
were  necessary  to  let  in  light  and  air ;  and  in  that  room  he 
labored  and  taught  during  fifteen  of  the  best  years  of  his 
life. 

Another  curious  proof  of  the  universal  ignorance  of  science 
at  the  time,  Professor  Silliman  has  recorded.  He  applied  to 
a  glass  manufacturer  to  make  some  retorts  for  him.  The 
man  replied  that  he  had  never  seen  a  retort,  but  he  had  no 
doubt  he  could  make  some,  if  a  pattern  were  sent  him. 

WI  had  a  retort,"  says  Professor  Silliman,  "the  neck  or 
tube  of  which  was  broken  off  near  the  ball ;  but  as  no  portion 
was  missing,  and  the  two  parts  exactly  fitted  each  other,  I 
sent  this  retort  and  its  neck  in  a  box.  In  due  time  my  dozen 
of  green  glass  retorts  of  East  Hartford  manufacture  arrived, 
carefully  boxed,  and  all  sound,  except  that  they  were  all 
cracked  off  in  the  neck  exactly  where  the  pattern  was  frac- 
tured ;  and  broken  neck  and  ball  lay  in  state,  like  decapitated 
kings  in  their  coffins." 

'With  such  rudimentary  difficulties  had  science  to  contend 


THE  BEGINNINGS   OF  SCIENCE   IN   THE   U.    S.  115 

in  the  infant  Eepublic.  In  October,  1804,  the  young  pro- 
fessor, in  his  subterranean  laboratory,  began  to  lecture  upon 
chemistry.  He  was  a  very  handsome  man,  of  stately  pro- 
portions, elegant  and  dignified  in  his  manners,  of  bland  and 
courteous  demeanor,  and  with  that  happy  manual  dexterity 
so  important  to  an  experimenter.  Thus  endowed,  he  .lec- 
tured with  striking  success  from  the  beginning,  and  gave  an 
impetus  to  the  study  of  Natural  Science  in  America  which 
will  never  cease  as  long  as  this  continent  remains  inhabited 
by  civilized  men.  Among  his  pupils  that  winter  were  Gal- 
laudet,  Heman  Humphrey,  John  Pierpont,  and  Gardiner 
Spring ;  and  often  when  the  Senior  class  descended  into  the 
laboratory,  President  D wight  would  follow,  and  humbly 
taking  his  seat  as  a  learner  among  them,  listen  to  the  lecture 
and  watch  the  experiments  with  the  deepest  interest.  The 
poet  Pierpont,  who  heard  the  first  lecture,  remembered  for 
sixty-one  years  the  words  of  its  opening  sentence  :  "  Chem- 
istry is  the  science  that  treats  of  the  changes  that  are  effected 
in  material  bodies  or  substances  by  light,  heat,  and  mix- 
ture." 

The  college  authorities,  under  the  influence  of  President 
Dwight,  were  bountiful  to  the  new  professorship,  appropri- 
ating soon  ten  thousand  dollars  for  apparatus,  and  sending 
Professor  Silliman  to  Europe  to  purchase  it,  and  to  improve 
himself  by  intercourse  with  the  learned  men  of  the  old 
world.  The  Professor  remained  fifteen  months  abroad,  and 
returned  to  New  Haven  provided  with  ample  means  for 
elucidating  chemistry,  and  enriched  with  the  results  of  the 
most  recent  investigation. 

"Why,  Domine,"  said  a  member  of  the  college  corporation 
to  Professor  Silliman  one  day,  "is  there  not  danger  that 
with  these  physical  attractions  you  will  overtop  the  Latin 
and  the  Greek  ?" 


116  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPEISE. 

"  Sir,"  replied  the  professor,  "  let  the  literary  gentlemen 
push  and  sustain  their  departments.  It  is  my  duty  to  give 
full  effect  to  the  sciences  committed  to  my  care." 

This  he  continued  to  do  for  more  than  half  a  century. 
Collections  of  great  value  gathered  round  him.  A  better 
laboratory  and  ampler  apparatus  followed  in  due  time. 
Other  branches  of  natural  science,  under  Day,  Olmstead, 
and  others,  received  their  share  of  attention,  and  no  college 
has  since  existed  in  the  United  States  in  which  the  natural 
sciences  have  not  held  a  leading  place  in  the  routine  of 
studies.  In  1818,  Professor  Silliman  began  the  publication 
of  the  "Journal  of  Science,"  a  quarterly  periodical,  which  he 
continued  to  edit  for  thirty  years,  and  which  has  had  much 
to  do  with  promoting  a  taste  among  learned  men  for  knowl- 
edge purely  scientific. 

It  cannot  be  said  of  Professor  Silliman  that  he  greatly 
increased  the  sum  of  human  knowledge,  but  few  men  have 
ever  lived  who  have  done  more  to  diffuse  it.  He  was  a 
great  teacher,  and  an  excellent  man.  He  was  one  of  the 
first  of  Americans  to  see  through  the  wine  delusion  which 
we  inherit  from  our  ancestors.  Like  most  people  of  his 
day,  he  supposed  that  stimulants  were  necessary  for  the 
preservation  and  restoration  of  health;  and  consequently 
when,  in  middle  life,  his  system  had  become  thoroughly 
disorganized  and  enfeebled,  he  resorted  to  the  means  then 
usually  employed  for  its  restoration.  I  wish  to  give  the 
result  of  his  experiment  in  his  own  language,  foialfce  consid- 
eration of  those  who  still  believe  in  the  restoring  virtue  of 
alcoholic  drinks. 

"I  yielded,  for  a  time,"  he  says,  "to  the  popular  belief 
that  good  wine  and  cordials  were  the  lever  which  would 
raise  my  depressed  power  ;  but  the  relief  was  only  temporary. 
.  .  .  No  medical  man  informed  me  that  I  was  pursuing  a 
wrong  course  ;  but  the  same  wise  and  good  friend  to  whom 


»~  '-~3 " 
r'—--  --- 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   SCIENCE   IN   THE   U.    S.  117 

I  had  been  already  so  much  indebted,  Mr.  Daniel  Wads- 
worth,  convinced  me,  after  much  effort,  that  my  best  chance 
for  recovery  was  to  abandon  all  stimulants,  and  adopt  a  very 
simple  diet,  and  in  such  quantities,  however  moderate,  as  the 
stomach  might  be  able  to  digest  and  assimilate.  I  took  my 
resolution  in  1823,  in  the  lowest  depression  of  health.  I 
abandoned  wine  and  every  other  stimulant,  including,  for  the 
time,  even  coffee  and  tea.  Tobacco  had  always  been  my  ab- 
horrence. ...  I  persevered  a  year  in  this  strict  regimen,  — 
of  plain  meat,  vegetables,  bread,  ancl  rice,  —  and  after  a  few 
weeks,  my  unpleasant  symptoms  abated,  my  strength  grad- 
ually increased,  and  health,  imperceptibly  in  its  daily  prog- 
ress, but  manifest  in  its  results,  stole  upon  me  unawares." 

He  lived  to  the  age  of  eighty-five,  enjoying  life  almost  to 
his  last  hour,  a  happy,  beautiful,  affectionate  old  man.  He 
would  have  lived  longer,  if  science  had  progressed  far  enough 
in  1864  to  show  us  some  safe,  easy  way  of  ventilating  public 
rooms.  He  suffered  extremely  from  the  bad  air  of  a  crowded 
chapel,  upon  leaving  which,  the  wintry  wind  struck  his  irri- 
tated and  enfeebled  lungs,  causing  a  cold,  of  which  he  died. 

The  colleges,  thus  formed  in  the  infancy  of  New  Eng- 
land, continue  to  hold  the  first  rank  among  the  institutions 
of  learning  in  America.  The  time,  I  hope,  is  not  distant, 
when  "  these  physical  attractions,"  and  the  languages  now 
spoken  in  the  world,  "  will  overtop  the  Latin  and  Greek," 
not  only  in  these  institutions,  but  in  all  others  which  aim  to 
prepare  the  youth  of  America  for  the  work  America  has 
for  them  to  do.  No  one  ever  more  keenly  enjoyed  the 
study  of  those  ancient  languages  than  I  did ;  but  no  one 
has  oftener  had  occasion  to  deplore  that  the  time  expended 
in  getting  a  very  imperfect  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek, 
Was  not  employed  in  obtaining  a  competent  knowledge  of 
French,  German,  Italian,  and  Spanish, — four  useful  lan- 
guages, and, four  rich  literatures  I 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  ELECTEIC  TELEGRAPH. 


DURING  the  voyage  of  the  packet  ship  Sully,  from  Havre 
to  New  York,  in  October,  1832,  a  conversation  arose  one 
day  in  the  cabin  upon  electricity  and  magnetism.  Dr. 
Charles  S.  Jackson,  of  Boston,  described  an  experiment 
recently  made  in  Paris  with  an  electro-magnet,  by  means  of 
which  electricity  had  been  transmitted  through  a  great  length 
of  wire,  arranged  in  circles  around  the  walls  of  a  large 
apartment.  The  transmission  had  been  instantaneous,  and 
it  seemed  as  though  the  flight  of  electricity  was  too  rapid 
to  be  measured.  Among  the  group  of  passengers,  no  one 
listened  more  attentively  to  Dr.  Jackson's  recital  than  a 
New  York  artist,  named  Samuel  Finley  Breece  Morse,  who 
was  returning  from  a  three  years'  residence  in  Europe, 
whither  he  had  gone  for  improvement  in  his  art. 

Painter  as  he  was,  he  was  nevertheless  well  versed  in 
science,  for  which  he  had  inherited  an  inclination.  His 
father  was  that  once  famous  geographer  and  doctor  of  divin- 
ity, of  Charlestown,  Massachusetts,  whose  large  work  upon 
geography  was  to  be  found,  half  a  century  ago,  in  almost 
every  considerable  collection  of  books  in  America.  Besides 
assisting  his  father  in  his  geographical  studies,  Samuel  Morse 
had  studied  chemistry  at  Yale  College,  under  Professor  Sil- 
limau,  and  natural  philosophy  under  Professor  Day.  After 
graduating  from  Yale,  in  1810,  he  went  with  Washington 
Allston  to  London,  where  he  received  instruction  in  painting 
from  Sir  Benjamin  West.  Returning  to  the  United  States 

8 


120  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

in  1815,  he  pursued  his  vocation  with  so  much  success,  that 
he  was  elected  the  first  president  of  our  National  Academy, 
and  held  the  office  for  sixteen  years.  In  1829,  he  went  again 
to  Europe,  for  further  improvement;  and  it  was  when 
returning  from  this  visit  that  the  conversation  took  place 
in  the  cabin  of  the  Sully.  During  all  the  years  of  his  artist 
life,  he  had  retained  his  early  love  for  science,  and  usually 
was  himself  Veil  informed  of  its  progress.  Hence  the  eager- 
ness with  which  he  listened  to  Dr.  Jackson's  narrative. 

M  Why,"  said  he,  when  the  Doctor  had  finished,  "  if  that 
is  so,  and  the  presence  of  electricity  could  be  made  visible 
in  any  desired  part  of  the  circuit,  I  see  no  reason  why  in- 
telligence might  not  be  transmitted  instantaneously  by 
electricity." 

"How  convenient  it  would  be,"  added  one  of  the  passen- 
gers, "  if  we  could  send  news  in  that  manner." 

"  Why  can't  we  ?  "  asked  Morse,  fascinated  by  the  i3ea. 

From  that  hour  the  subject  occupied  his  thoughts  ;  and  he 
began  forthwith  to  exercise  his  Yankee  ingenuity  in  devis- 
ing the  requisite  apparatus.  Voyages  were  long  in  those 
days,  and  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  meditate  and  contrive. 
Before  the  Sully  dropped  her  anchor  in  New  York  harbor, 
he  had  invented  and  put  upon  paper,  in  drawings  and  explan- 
atory words,  the  chief  features  of  the  apparatus  employed,  to 
this  hour,  by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  telegraphic  lines 
throughout  the  world. 

The  system  of  dots  and  marks,  the  narrow  ribbon  of 
paper  upon  a  revolving  block,  and  a  mode  of  burying  the 
wires  in  the  earth  after  inclosing  them  in  tubes,  all  were, 
thought  of  and  recorded  on  board  the  packet-ship.  The 
invention,  in  fact,  so  far  as  the  theory  and  the  essential 
devices  were  concerned,  except  alone  the  idea  of  suspending 
the  wires  upon  posts,  was  completed  on  board  the  vessel. 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH.  121 

A  few  days  after  landing,  the  plan,  now  universally  em- 
ployed, of  supporting  the  wires,  was  thought  of  by  the 
inventor,  though  he  still  preferred  his  original  conception 
of  the  buried  tubes. 

The  reader,  of  course,  is  aware  that  the  mere  idea  of  trans- 
mitting intelligence  by  electricity  was  not  original  with 
Samuel  Morse.  From  the  time  when  Dr.  Franklin  and  his 
friends  stretched  a  wire  across  the  Schuylkill  River,  and 
killed  a  turkey  for  their  dinner  by  a  shock  from  an  electri- 
cal machine  on  the  other  side  of  the  stream,  the  notion  had 
existed  of  using  the  marvellous  fluid  for  transmitting  in- 
telligence ;  and  long  before  the  Sully  was  launched,  some 
attempts  had  been  made  in  this  direction,  which  were  not 
wholly  unsuccessful. 

There  is  no  instance  on  record,  I  believe,  of  a  great  inven- 
tion completed  by  the  efforts  of  one  man.  Usually,  an  inven- 
tion of  first-rate  importance  is  originated  in  one  age,  and 
brought  to  perfection  in  another ;  and  we  can  sometimes 
trace  its  progress  for  thousands  of  years.  Probably  so  sim- 
ple a  matter  as  a  pair  of  scissors  —  one  of  the  oldest  of  inven- 
tions —  was  the  result  of  the  cogitations  of  many  ingenious 
minds,  and  has  undergone  improvements  from  the  days  of 
Pharaoh  to  those  of  Rogers  &  Sons.  The  most  remarkable 
case  of  rapid  invention  with  which  I  am  acquainted  is  that  of 
the  sewing-machine,  which,  in  twenty-five  years,  has  been 
brought  to  a  point  not  distant  from  perfection.  But  then 
thousands  of  ingenious  minds  have  exerted  themselves  upon 
it !  In  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington,  not  less  than  thir- 
teen hundred  devices  and  improvements  have  been  patented 
relating  to  this  beautiful  contrivance. 

The  electric  telegraph  is  an  instance  of  the  slow  growth 
of  a  great  invention.  The  first  step  was  taken  toward  it 
thousands  of  years  ago,  when  some  one  observed  that  if  a 


122  TRIUMPHS   OF   ESTTERPRISE. 

piece  of  amber  was  rubbed  against  cloth,  it  attracted  small 
objects  and  emitted  a  spark.  In  Greek,  the  word  electron 
signifies  amber ;  and  hence  the  name  which  has  been  given 
to  the  mysterious  and  wonderful  fluid  that  pervades  the  uni- 
verse. The  second  step  toward  the  telegraph  was  not  made 
until  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  when  a  Dutch  professor 
invented  the  Leyden  jar,  by  which  electricity  can  be  accu- 
mulated, and  from  which  it  can  be  suddenly  discharged  in 
an  electric  shock. 

From  that  time  electricity  became,  in  all  civilized  coun- 
tries, the  favorite  branch  of  science.  Franklin's  discoveries 
quickly  followed.  Galvani  led  the  way  to  electro-magnetism, 
which  Volta  pursued  with  striking  success.  The  galvanic 
battery  was  speedily  added  to  the  resources  of  science.  The 
electro-magnet  followed;  and  in  1719,  Professor  Oersted,  of 
Denmark,  so  increased  our  knowledge  of  these  instruments, 
that  little  remained  except  for  ingenious  inventors  to  devise 
the  mechanical  apparatus  of  the  telegraph. 

An  artist,  arriving  at  home  after  a  three  years'  residence 
in  foreign  countries,  is  not  apt  to  be  furnished  with  a  great 
abundance  of  cash  capital ;  nor  is  he  usually  able  to  spend 
any  more  time  in  unproductive  industry.  Three  years  passed 
before  Mr.  Morse  had  set  up  his  rude  apparatus  of  half  a 
mile  of  wire  and  a  wooden  clock,  adapted  to  the  purpose  by 
his  own  hands,  and  sent  a  message  from  one  end  of  his  wire 
to  the  other,  legible  at  least  by  himself.  He  used  to  exhibit 
his  apparatus  now  and  then  to  his  friends,  and  he  spent  all 
the  time  he  could  spare  from  his  profession  in  perfecting  it. 
For  some  time  it  was  placed  in  a  large  room  of  the  New 
York  University,  where,  in  the  fall  of  1837,  large  numbers 
of  persons  witnessed  its  operation. 

The  invention  attracted  much  notice  at  the  time,  as  I  can 
just  remember.  Every  one  said,  How  wonderful !  how 


ORIGIN   OF   TILE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH.  123 

ingenious  !  and  boasted  of  the  progress  man  was  making  in 
science ;  but  scarcely  any  one  believed  that  the  invention 
could  be  turned  to  profitable  account,  and  no  man  could  be 
found  in  New  York  willing  to  risk  his  capital  in  putting  the 
invention  to  a  practical  test.  By  this  time,  however,  Mr. 
Morse  had  become  fully  possessed  of  the .  inventor's  mania, 
which  shuts  a  man's  eyes  to  all  obstacles,  and  forces  him 
to  pursue  his  project  to  the  uttermost. 

Having  no  other  resource,  he  went  to  Washington 
in  1838,  arranged  his  apparatus  there,  exhibited  its  per- 
formance to  as  many  members  as  he  could  induce  to 
attend,  and  petitioned  Congress  for  a  grant  of  public 
money  with  which  to  make  an  experimental  line  between 
Washington  and  Baltimore,  a  distance  of  forty  miles.  It  is 
weary  work  getting  a  grant  of  money  from  Congress  for 
such  a  purpose ;  and  it  ought  to  be,  for  Congress  has  no 
constitutional  right  to  give  away  the  people's  money  to  test 
such  an  invention.  A  committee  reported  upon  it  favora- 
bly, but  nothing  further  was  done  during  the  session. 

He  crossed  the  ocean  to  seek  assistance  in  Europe.  His 
efforts  were  fruitless.  Neither  in  France  nor  in  England 
could  he  obtain  public  or  private  encouragement.  It 
seemed  out  of  the  sphere  of  government,  and  capitalists 
were  strangely  obtuse,  not  to  the  merits  of  the  invention, 
but  to  the  probability  of  its  being  profitable.  They  could 
not  conceive  that  any  considerable  number  of  persons  in  a 
country  would  care  to  pay  for  the  instantaneous  transmission 
of  news.  Eeturning  home  disappointed,  but  not  dis- 
couraged, he  renewed  his  efforts,  winter  after  winter,  using 
all  the  influence  of  his  personal  presence  at  Washington, 
and  all  his  powers  of  argument  and  persuasion. 

March  the  third,  1843,  the  last  day  of  the  session,  was 
come.  He  attended  all  day  the  House  of  Kepresentatives, 


124  TEIUMPHS   OP  ENTEKPEISE. 

faintly  hoping  that  something  might  be  done  for  him  before 
the  final  adjournment ;  but  as  the  evening  wore  away,  the 
pressure  and  confusion  increased,  and  at  length  hope  died 
within  him  and  he  left  the  Capitol.  He  walked  sadly  home 
and  went  to  bed. 

Imagine  the  rapture  with  which  he  heard  on  the  follow- 
ing morning  that  Congress,  late  in  the  night,  amid  the  roar 
and  stress  preceding  the  adjournment,  had  voted  him  thirty 
thousand  dollars  for  constructing  his  experimental  line ! 
Eleven  years  and  a  half  had  passed  since  he  had  made  his 
invention  on  board  the  ship.  Perhaps,  on  that  morning,  he 
thought  it  worth  while  to  strive  and  suffer  for  so  long  a 
period,  to  enjoy  the  thrill  and  ecstasy  which  he  then  expe- 
rienced. 

But  his  troubles  were  far  from  being  over.  Clinging 
still  to  his  original  notion  of  inclosing  the  wires  in  buried 
tubes,  he  wasted  nearly  a  whole  year,  and  spent  twenty- 
three  thousand  dollars  of  his  appropriation  in  discovering 
that  the  plan  would  not  work. 

And  this  brings  another  character  on  the  scene, — the 
founder  of  the  Cornell  University.  Ezra  Cornell  has  a  place 
in  the  history  of  the  telegraph,  which  would  have  caused  his 
name  to  be  remembered  if  he  had  never  founded  a  univer- 
sity. At  a  critical  moment,  his  ingenuity  came  to  the  rescue 
of  Morse's  enterprise,  and  saved  it,  perhaps,  from  premature 
extinction.  The  telegraph,  in  return  for  this  service,  has 
since  given  him  a  colossal  fortune,  part  of  which  he  has 
expended  in  a  manner  with  which  the  world  is  acquainted. 

On  a  certain  day  in  1842,  when  he  was  a  travelling  agent 
for  a  patent  plough,  he  arrived  at  Portland,  in  Maine,  and, 
naturally  enough,  called  at  the  office  of  an  agricultural  jour- 
nal, edited  by  Mr.  F.  O.  J.  Smith,  with  whom  he  was  well 
acquainted.  This  visit  proved  to  be  the  turning-point  in  the 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH.  125 

plough  agent's  career.  Horace  Greeley  often  says,  that  every 
man  has  one  chance  in  his  life  to  make  a  fortune  ;  and  Mr. 
Disraeli  has  recently  informed  mankind  that  the  secret  of 
success  is,  to  be  ready  for  your  opportunity  when  it  comes. 
Mr.  Cornell's  opportunity  was  now  coming,  and  he  was 
ready  for  it.  On  entering  the  office,  he  found  the  editor  on 
his  knees,  with  parts  of  a  plough  by  his  side,  drawing  on  the 
floor  with  a  piece  of  chalk,  and  trying  to  explain  his  draw- 
ing to  a  plough-maker  named  Robinson,  who  was  standing 
near. 

"  Cornell,"  said  the  editor,  with  animation,  and  as  if  much 
relieved, "  you  are  the  very  man  I  wanf  to  see.  I  want  a 
scraper  made,  and  I  can't  make  Eobinson  understand  exactly 
what  I  want.  But  you  can  understand  it,  and  make  it  for 
me  too." 

Ezra  Cornell  had  indeed  learned  the  trade  of  a  machinist. 
The  son  of  a  farmer,  named  Elijah  Cornell,  in  Westchester 
County,  New  York,  he  had  passed  his  boyhood,  as  our 
country  boys  usually  do,  in  working  on  his  father's  farm,  and 
going  to  the  district  school  during  the  winter.  In  1828, 
when  he  came  of  age,  he  went  to  Ithaca,  New  York,  in 
search  of  employment,  and  there  worked  a  while  in  a 
machine-shop,  and  afterwards  passed  several  years  as  the 
superintendent  of  a  large  mill  in  Ithaca.  Of  an  ingenious, 
inventive  turn  of  mind,  he  had  become  familiar  with  the 
mechanical  powers,  could  handle  tools  with  dexterity,  and 
was  fertile  in  what  may  be  called  mechanical  ideas.  He  was 
one  of  those  men  who  would  undertake  on  the  spot  to  build 
a  mill,  dig  a  canal,  bore  the  Hoosac  Tunnel,  or  construct 
the  High  Bridge,  and  execute  the  work  in  a  triumphant  man- 
ner. He  was  a  sound,  healthy  man,  too,  who  drank  no 
intoxicating  drink,  used  no  tobacco,  and  lived  cleanly  in 
every  respect.  It  was  with  reason,  therefore,  that  the  editor 


126  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

felt  relieved  when  he  saw  him  enter  his  office  that  day  in 
Portland,  while  he  was  vainly  expounding  an  imaginary 
scraper  to  Mr.  Kobinson. 

"What  do  you  want  your  scraper  to  do?"  asked  Cornell. 

Mr.  Smith  explained.  Congress  had  made  an  appropria- 
tion to  build  a  line  of  telegraph  between  Washington  and 
Baltimore,  and  Mr.  Smith  had  taken  the  contract  from  Pro- 
fessor Morse  to  lay  down  the  pipe  in  which  the  wire  was  to 
be  inclosed.  Finding  that  it  would  cost  a  great  deal  more 
to  do  the  work  than  he  had  calculated  upon,  he  was  trying  to 
invent  something  which  would  dig  the  ditch,  and  fill  it  with 
dirt  again,  after  the  pipe  was  laid  at  the  bottom.  Cornell 
asked  various  questions  concerning  the  size  of  the  pipe  and 
the  depth  of  the  ditch,  and,  after  thinking  a  while,  said  :  — 

M  You  don't  want  either  a  ditch  or  a  scraper." 

He  then  took  a  pencil  and  drew  the  outline  of  a  machine, 
to  be  drawn  by  a  yoke  of  oxen,  which,  he  said,  would  cut 
open  the  ground  to  the  depth  of  two  feet,  deposit  the  pipe 
at  the  bottom,  and  cover  it  with  earth,  as  the  oxen  drew  the 
machine  along.  The  editor  was  incredulous.  Cornell,  how- 
ever, expressed  unbounded  confidence  in  its  successful  work- 
ing, and  Smith  at  last  agreed  to  pay  for  one,  provided  Cor- 
nell would  superintend  its  construction.  If  it  succeeded, 
the  inventor  was  to  be  handsomely  paid ;  if  it  failed,  he  was 
to  receive  nothing.  Ten  days  after,  the  trial  took  place, 
when  one  yoke  of  oxen,  with  the  assistance  of  the  machine 
and  three  men,  laid  one  hundred  feet  of  pipe  and  covered  it 
with  earth  in  the  first  five  minutes.  The  contractor  found 
that  he  could  lay  the  pipe  for  about  ten  dollars  a  mile,  for 
which  he  was  to  receive  a  hundred  dollars. 

Nothing  would  now  content  the  contractor  but  Cornell's 
going  to  Baltimore  and  superintending  the  working  of  the 
machine  which  he  had  invented ;  and  as  he  made  an  advan- 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH.  127 

tageous  offer,  Cornell  agreed  to  go.  Upon  conversing  with 
Professor  Morse,  and  inspecting  the  pipe  that  was  to  be  used, 
he  predicted  failure,  and  endeavored  to  convince  the  Profes- 
sor that  the  pipe  would  not  answer.  Morse  clung  to  the 
child  of  his  brain,  and  the  work  was  begun.  The  pipe  was 
laid  with  great  rapidity,  and  it  was  not  until  Mr.  Cornell  had 
ploughed  in  ten  miles  of  pipe,  nearly  all  the  way  from  Balti- 
more to  the  Relay  House,  that  Morse  was  satisfied  messages 
could  not  be  transmitted  through  it.  But,  as  our  French 
friends  say,  "  The  eyes  of  the  universe  were  upon  him,"  and 
he  shrank  from  the  comments  of  the  press  upon  the  waste  of 
the  public  money  in  an  experiment  so  prolonged.  The  ready 
Cornell  quickly  relieved  him  from  this  embarrassment.  He 
shouted  to  his  men  one  day  :  — 

"  Hurry  up,  boys  .  Start  the  team  liyely !  We  must 
reach  the  Eelay  House  before  we  leave  off  to-night." 

Cornell,  who  was  guiding  the  machine,  directed  it  so  that 
it  caught  under  a  rock,  and  in  a  moment  it  was  smashed  to 
pieces.  The  newspapers  lamented  the  catastrophe,  and  con- 
doled with  the  inventor  upon  the  delay  which  it  would  cause. 
Another  kind  of  pipe  was  tried,  and  failed.  The  whole  of 
that  year  was  consumed  in  such  experiments.  At  last,  when 
but  seven  thousand  dollars  of  the  appropriation  was  left,  and 
Professor  Morse  was  almost  in  despair,  he  gave  up  the  exe- 
cution of  the  work  to  Mr.  Cornell,  who  forthwith,  with  the 
Professor's  approval,  abandoned  the  pipe  system,  and  set  up 
the  telegraphic  wire  upon  poles,  employing  an  insulator  and 
a  relay  magnet  of  his  own  invention. 

On  the  first  of  May,  1843,  the  first  message  was  sent ;  and 
although  every  part  of  the  apparatus  worked  imperfectly, 
and  sometimes  would  not  work  at  all,  the  line  was  sufficiently 
successful  to  establish  the  electric  telegraph  as  a  permanent 
addition  to  the  possessions  of  man.  No  one  more  constantly 


128  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

\ 

studied  its  defects  than  Ezra  Cornell;  for,  from  this  time 
forward,  it  became  his  business  to  construct  telegraphic  lines. 
After  a  long  struggle  with  the  early  difficulties  —  mechanical, 
scientific,  pecuniary  —  he  systematized  the  business  so  that 
it  became  profitable.  Like  most  contractors,  he  occasionally 
received  part  of  his  compensation  for  constructing  a  line  in 
stock  of  the  company  owning  it ;  and  when  the  great  rise  in 
the  value  of  telegraphic  stock  occurred,  some  years  ago,  he 
found  himself  a  very  rich  man. 

Many  years  elapsed  before  the  invention  was  of  much 
advantage  to  Mr.  Morse.  Rival  inventors  entered  the  field, 
and  rival  companies  spoiled  the  business.  It  was  not  until 
the  consolidation  of  most  of  the  companies  into  two  or  three, 
that  the  business  of  transmitting  messages  by  telegraph  was 
very  profitable  to  any  one.  During  the  last  few  years,  the 
inventor  has  been  enriched ;  but  I  presume  there  are  at  least 
fifty  persons  now  living  who,  without  having  contributed  an 
idea  to  the  invention,  have  made  more  money  by  it  than  the 
inventor. 

What  an  astounding  development  the  business  has  attaiaed 
in  the  United  States  !  We  have  one  company,  the  capital 
$tock  of  which  is  forty-one  millions  of  dollars,  and  the 
receipts  during  the  year  1869,  seven  millions  and  a  half,  of 
which  more  than  two  millions  and  a  half  was  profit.  This 
company  has  121,595  miles  of  wire,  3,469  stations,  2,607 
instruments  for  reading  by  sound,  1,334  recording  instru- 
-.  ments,  and  22,000  magnetic  battery-cups.  It  transmitted, 
last  year,  40,000,000  messages,  and  an  amount  of  newspaper 
matter  equal  to  about  30,000  columns.  There  is  one  tele- 
graphic office  in  the  city  of  New  York  in  which  125  operators 
are  employed,  and  you  may  see  them  at  work,  if  you  step  in 
at  the  corner  of  Broadway  and  Liberty  Street.  It  is  not  un- 
usual for  this  office  to  receive  and  send  30,000  messages  in 


ORIGIN   OF   THE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH.  129 

one  day.  There  is  a  small  sign-board,  over  one  of  the  cable 
offices,  which,  I  should  suppose,  Mr.  Morse  could  never  read 
without  emotion.  It  is  this  :  — 

"  Telegraphic  messages  sent  to  all  parts  of  Europe,  Asia 
and  Africa." 


JAEBD  SPAEKS. 


FROM  THE  CARPENTER'S  BENCH  TO  THE  PRESIDENCY  OF  HARVARD 

COLLEGE. 

I  TELL  you  again,  boys,  that  you  may  all  be  as  learned  as 
you  wish,  even  though  you  have  no  rich  father  to  send  you 
to  college.  The  history  of  the  late  Dr.  Jared  Sparks,  Presi- 
dent of  Harvard  University,  and  editor  of  the  works  of 
Washington  and  Franklin,  is  another  illustration  of  this 
truth. 

He  was  a  Connecticut  boy,  born  as  long  ago  as  1789, 
and  as  poor  as  any  boy  that  reads  this  book.  He  earned 
his  living  as  soon  as  he  was  strong  enough  to  wield  a  hoe 
or  drive  a  plough-horse,  by  working  on  a  rough,  stony  Con- 
necticut farm ;  and  when  he  had  grown  to  be  a  pretty  stout 
lad,  he  was  occasionally  employed  in  a  saw-mill  of  the 
neighborhood.  When  the  time  came  for  him  to  learn  a 
business,  he  apprenticed  himself  to  a  carpenter ;  and  he 
worked  diligently  at  this  trade  for  two  years.  When  he 
was  twenty  years  of  age,  he  was  still  hammering,  planing, 
and  mortising  as  a  carpenter's  apprentice. 

But  during  all  this  time,  whether  working  on  a  farm,  or 
in  the  saw-mill,  or  in  the  carpenter's  shop,  he  spent  his  lei- 
sure hours  in  reading  and  study.  He  had  a  most  extraor- 
dinary thirst  for  knowledge.  The  clergyman  of  the  town, 
observing  his  studious  habits,  spoke  to  him  about  his  books, 
and,  finding  him  intent  on  getting  knowledge,  offered  to 


132  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

give  him  some  regular  instruction  in  mathematics,  and 
advised  him  to  study  Latin.  The  youth  joyfully  accepted 
this  offer ;  but  with  that  fine,  manly  spirit  that  distinguishes 
the  stock  from  which  he  sprang,  he  compensated  the  minis- 
ter by  shingling  his  barn  for  him.  With  all  his  studying, 
however,  he  had  no  expectation  of  ever  being  anything  but 
an  honest  Yankee  carpenter,  until  he  was  a  young  man  of 
nearly  twenty.  A  circumstance  then  occurred  which  opened 
the  way  for  him  to  a  college  education. 

He  was  sitting,  one  day,  in  the  chimney  corner  of  his 
clerical  instructor's  house,  so  intensely  engaged  in  study 
as  to  be  unconscious  of  all  else.  The  clergyman,  as  it  hap- 
pened, had  a  visitor  that  day,  the  minister  of  an  adjacent 
town,  and  the  two  gentlemen  conversed  together  for  some 
time  in  the  same  apartment.  Afterwards,  being  in  another 
room,  they  had  a  conversation  together  which  determined 
the  whole  future  career  of  the  silent  and  absorbed  young 
carpenter.  Dr.  Sparks  used  to  relate  this  conversation  him- 
self, and  one  of  his  friends  has  recently  put  it  on  record  in 
the  "Historical  Magazine." 

"  Did  you  notice  the  young  man  in  the  other  room  with 
his  books  ? "  asked  the  clergyman  in  whose  house  the  collo- 
quy occurred. 

"Yes,"  said  the  other. 

"He  is  a  very  remarkable  young  man,"  continued  the  cler- 
gyman ;  "he  has  a  great  thirst  for  knowledge,  and  ought  to 
be  helped  to  obtain  a  liberal  education.  I  have  promised  to 
give  him  two  months'  instruction,  and  hope  to  interest  the 
neighboring  clergy  to  do  as  much  for  him."' 

"  Most  certainly  I  will  help  him,"  said  the  other  minister, 
who  was  himself  a  great  lover  of  knowledge ;  "  and  I  will 
try  to  do  better  for  him  than  to  give  him  tuition  at  my  own 
house.  I  am  acquainted  with  the  trustees  of  Exeter  Acad- 


JABED   SPARKS.  133 

emy,  in  New  Hampshire,  where  there  is  a  provision  for 
worthy  scholars  who  may  be  unable  to  pay  their  expenses, 
and  I  think  I  can  get  him  a  place  there." 

This  Exeter  Academy  was  founded  in  1778  by  two  noble 
brothers,  John  and  Samuel  Phillips.  Among  those  who  have 
been  educated  there,  in  part,  we  find  the  names  of  Daniel 
Webster,  Lewis  Cass,  Levi  Woodbury,  Benjamin  F.  Butler, 
Alexander  Everett,  Edward  Everett,  and  George  Bancroft. 
To  this  list  we  must  add  the  name  of  Jared  Sparks  ;  for  the 
friendly  interposition  of  this  good  clergyman  procured  for 
him  a  scholarship  in  the  academy  at  Exeter,  which  entitled 
him  to  his  board  and  tuition. 

Jared  Sparks  was  a  happy  young  man  when  this  intelli- 
gence reached  him,  but  his  difficulties  were  not  yet  over. 
Readers  must  not  forget  how  very  poor  and  frugal  people 
were  fifty  years  ago  in  Connecticut.  This  apprentice  had 
scarcely  a  dollar  in  the  world,  and  his  time  was  not  yet  out. 
His  master,  however,  fully  sympathizing  with  his  love  of 
knowledge,  gave  him  his  liberty  without  any  compensation, 
and  nothing  remained  but  for  him  to  pack  his  trunk  and 
go  to  school.  But  Exeter  was  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
distant. 

"  How  can  you  manage  to  get  to  Exeter  ?  "  asked  the  cler 
gyman  who  had  procured  him  the  scholarship. 

The  reader  may  ask,  Why  did  not  the  clergyman  just  put 
his  hand  into  his  pocket  and  pay.  the  young  man's  fare  by 
the  stage  ?  To  which  I  reply,  that  a  Connecticut  minister, 
in  1809,  was  a  man  who  had  to  bring  up  a  large  family, 
respectably,  upon  five  or  six  hundred  dollars  a  year,  or  less. 
Such  a  man  has  not  twenty  dollars  to  spare. 

"  If  it  were  not  for  my  trunk,"  replied  the  student,  "  I 
should  walk." 

The  minister  replied  in  the  spirit  of  one  who  said,  w  Sil- 


134  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ver  and  gold  have  I  none,  but  such  as  I  have  I  give  unto 
you." 

"  Within  a  few  weeks,"  said  he,  "I  shall  make  a  journey 
to  Boston"  (which  is  far  on  the  way  to  Exeter) , "  and  if  you 
can  get  along  till  that  time,  I  will  tie  your  trunk  to  the  axle- 
tree  of  my  chaise,  and  bring  it  to  you." 

The  young  man  gladly  consented  to  this  arrangement,  and, 
a  few  days  after,  he  bade  good-by  to  his  friends,  and,  espe- 
cially, to  his  two  benefactors,  slung  his  bundle  over  his  back, 
and  set  off  upon  his  long  tramp. 

He  reached  Exeter  in  safety.  The  school  gave  him  his 
food  and  instruction,  and  he  earned  his  clothes  and  his  books 
by  teaching  school  in  the  vacations.  It  so  chanced  that  three 
young  men,  destined  to  distinction  as  American  historians, 
were  all  at  this  school  at  the  same  time,  — George  Bancroft, 
Jared  Sparks,  and  J.  G.  Palfrey,  the  historian  of  New  Eng- 
land. After  two  years  of  most  faithful  study,  Jared  Sparks 
had  completed  the  academical  course  and  was  ready  to  enter 
college. 

He  was  as  poor  as  ever,  and  the  expenses  of  a  residence 
at  Harvard  University  amounted,  at  that  time,  to  about  four 
hundred  dollars  a  year.  But,  all  this  time,  although  he  had 
not  saved  any  money,  he  had  been  accumulating  character 
and  reputation.  A  virtuous  young  man,  who  is  trying  hard 
to  educate  himself,  finds  friends  everywhere.  On  this  occa- 
sion, the  President  of  Harvard,  the  benevolent  Dr.  Kirkland, 
who  had  been  told  the  history  of  young  Sparks,  stepped 
forward  and  gave  him  a  helping  hand.  He  procured  for 
him  a  "  scholarship  "  in  the  University,  which  entitled  him 
to  his  tuition,  and  part  of  the  cost  of  his  board.  Thus 
sided,  he  ventured,  when  twenty-two  years  of  age,  to  enter 
college,  and,  during  the  vacations,  earned  the  rest  of  his 
expenses  by  teaching  school.  Generally  he  taught  in  district 


JARED    SPARKS.  135 

schools  of  the  neighborhood,  but  once  he  went  as  far  as 
Maryland,  and  taught  awhile  in  an  academy  there.  It  was 
during  the  war  of  1812  that  he  taught  in  Maryland,  and  he 
was  there  when  the  British  landed  and  invaded  the  State. 
All  the  men  being  called  to  arms,  he,  too,  shouldered  a 
musket,  and  served  in  the  militia  until  the  enemy  had  with- 
drawn. Returning  to  college,  he  completed  his  studies, 
and  graduated  with  high  distinction  in  1815,  being  then 
twenty-six  years  of  age. 

So  far,  so  good.  He  had  worked  his  way,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  generous  friends,  through  college,  and  now  he  was 
to  choose  what  he  would  do  with  his  knowledge.  It  is  a 

o 

beautiful  arrangement  of  things  in  the  United  States  that  a 
poor  young  man,  who  wishes  to  educate  himself,  can  only 
earn  the  means  of  doing  it  by  helping  to  educate  others ; 
and  when  even  he  has  gone  through  college,  if  he  desires  to 
study  for  a  profession,  still  he  is  obliged  to  teach  in  order  to 
live  until  he  is  ready  to  practise  his  profession.  Jared 
Sparks  had  resolved  to  study  for  the  ministry,  and  he  did  so 
for  the  space  of  four  years,  during  which  he  performed  labor 
enough  for  two  ordinary  men.  After  teaching  a  while  in  a 
boys'  school,  he  was  appointed  tutor  in  Harvard  College. 
Soon  after,  he  was  engaged  to  edit  the  "  North  American 
Review,"  which  he  did  for  two  years,  with  general  approval. 
It  was  not  till  1819,  when  he  was  thirty  years  of  age,  that 
his  theological  studies  were  completed,  and  he  was  ordained 
a  Unitarian  minister.  Thus,  it  required  ten  years  to  transfer 
this  young  man  from  the  carpenter's  shop  to  the  pulpit. 
Having  reached  the  pulpit,  he  found  its  labors  unsuited  to 
his  bodily  constitution,  and  therefore,  after  preaching  for 
four  years  in  Baltimore,  he  resigned  his  charge,  and  spent 
the  whole  of  the  rest  of  his  long  life  in  instructing  his  coun- 
trymen by  means  of  printed  books. 


136  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Six  hundred  thousand  volumes,  bearing  his  name  on  the 
title-page,  have  been  sold  in  the  United  States  during  the 
last  forty  years. 

He  became  an  author  while  yet  a  pastor,  having  published 
some  theological  works.  Returning  to  Boston,  he  purchased 
the  "North  American  Review,"  edited  it  for  many  years,  and 
wrote  for  its  pages  more  than  fifty  articles.  It  was  Jared 
Sparks  who  gathered  up  and  gave  to  the  world,  in  twelve 
precious  volumes,  the  writings  of  George  Washington.  It 
was  Jared  Sparks  who  collected  the  widely  scattered  letters 
and  works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  published  them  hi  ten 
volumes.  The  Diplomatic  Correspondence  of  the  United 
States  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution,  gathered  patiently 
in  the  archives  of  France,  England,  Germany,  and  the  United 
States,  was  published  by  him  in  seventeen  volumes.  Four 
interesting  volumes  of  letters,  addressed  to  General  Washing- 
ton, were  edited  by  this  indefatigable  man.  He  also  wrote, 
or  caused  to  be  written,  thirty  or  forty  small  volumes  of 
American  biography,  designed  for  general  circulation. 

These  arduous  and  useful  labors  resulted  in  placing  Dr. 
Sparks  at  his  ease  in  pecuniary  matters.  Every  dollar  that 
friends  had  advanced  him  at  school  or  college  he  repaid, 
principal  and  interest,  and  he  was  always  most  ready  to 
assist  young  men  who  were  striving  for  an  education  against 
adverse  circumstances.  As  President  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity, he  favored  a  mild  and  confiding  system  of  govern- 
ment. One  of  his  friends  has  related  the  following  anecdote 
of  him,  as  President  of  the  college  :  — 

"  One  of  the  scholars  in  the  institution  made  a  noise  some- 
what derisive  to  one  of  the  tutors,  as  he  was  coming  out 
from  recitation.  The  tutor  stated  the  case  to  the  Faculty, 
and  gave  the  names  of  several  who,  if  not  guilty,  he  thought 
might  know  who  was.  These  young  men  were  summoned 


JAKED   SPARKS.  137 

before  the  President,  who  was  requested  to  ask  them,  one 
by  one,  if  they  made  the  noise,  or  who  made  it?  Dr. 
Sparks  addressed  them,  when  they  came  before  him,  in  sub- 
stance as  follows  :  —  , 

" '  I  have  been  requested  by  the  Faculty  to  ask  you  if  you  made, 
or  know  who  made,  the  disturbance  at  the  close  of  your  recent 
recitation.  I  have  stated  to  you  their  request,  but  if  you  know  who 
made  the  noise,  I  do  not  intend  to  ask  you  to  tell.' 

"  They  answered,  one  after  another ;  some  did  not  know ;  some 
said  they  knew,  but  did  not  tell.  Finally,  one  was  called  forward 
who  said :  — 

"  '  I  did  it  myself ;  I  know  I  ought  not  to  have  done  it ;  I  am 
sorry  that  I  did  it ;  I  hardly  know  why  I  did  it ;  yes,  I  should  say 
it  was  because  I  did  not  like  the  tutor,  as  I  thought  he  had  not 
used  me  fairly  in  some  of  my  recitations.' 

President  Sparks  told  the  Faculty  that  he  ought  rather  to  be 
commended  than  punished ;  but  the  tutors  outvoted  the  others,  and 
he  was  suspended.  Dr.  Sparks  wrote  a  note  to  his  father,  saying 
that  he  considered  it  no  dishonor,  as  young  men  did  not  often  have 
such  an  opportunity  to  show  themselves  so  frank  and  noble." 

Dr.  Sparks  died  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven,  leaving  his 
only  son  a  student  at  the  college  to  which  he  owed  his  own 
education.  He  was  a  kind  and  happy  old  man.  We  have 
had  in  the  United  States  many  literary  men  more  brilliant  and 
famous ;  but,  I  venture  to  predict,  not  one  to  whom  posterity 
will  be  so  much  indebted  as  Jared  Sparks,  who,  in  his 
twentieth  year,  was  a  carpenter's  apprentice. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  SEWING-MACHINE. 


IN  Cornhill,  Boston,  thirty  years  ago,  there  was  a  shop  for 
the  manufacture  and  repair  of  nautical  instruments  and  phil- 
osophical apparatus,  kept  by  Ari  Davis/  Mr.  Davis  was  a 
very  ingenious  mechanic,  who  had  invented  a  successful 
dovetailing  machine,  much  spoken  of  at  the  time,  when 
inventions  were  not  as  numerous  as  they  are  now.  Being 
thus  a  noted  man  in  his  calling,  he  gave  way  to  the  foible  of 
affecting  an  oddity  of  dress  and  deportment.  It  pleased  him 
to  say  extravagant  and  nonsensical  things,  and  to  go  about 
singing,  and  to  attract  attention  by  unusual  garments.  Nev- 
ertheless, being  a  really  skilful  mechanic,  he  was  frequently 
consulted  by  the  inventors  and  improvers  of  machinery,  to 
whom  he  sometimes  gave  a  valuable  suggestion. 

In  the  year  1839,  two  men  in  Boston —  one  a  mechanic,  and 
the  other  a  capitalist  —  were  striving  to  produce  a  knitting- 
machine,  which  proved  to  be  a  task  beyond  their  strength. 
When  the  inventor  was  at  his  wit's  end,  his  capitalist  brought 
the  machine  to  the  shop  of  Ari  Davis,  to  see  if  that  eccentric 
genius  could  suggest  the  solution  of  the  difficulty,  and  make 
the  machine  work.  The  shop,  resolving  itself  into  a  com- 
mittee of  the  whole,  gathered  about  the  knitting-machine  and 
its  proprietor,  and  were  listening  to  an  explanation  of  its 
principle,  when  Davis,  in  his  wild,  extravagant  way,  broke 
in  with  these  words  :  "  What  are  you  bothering  yourselves 
with  a  knitting-machine  for  ?  Why  don't  you  make  a  sew- 
ing-machine ?  " 


140  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

"  I  wish  I  could,"  said  the  capitalist ;  "  but  it  can't  be 
done." 

"O,  yes  it  can,"  said  Davis;  "I  can  make  a  sewing- 
machine  myself." 

"Well,"  said  the  other,  ff  you  do  it,  Davis,  and  I  '11  insure 
you  an  independent  fortune." 

There  the  conversation  dropped,  and  it  was  never  resumed. 
The  boastful  remark  of  the  master  of  the  shop  was  considered 
merely  one  of  his  sallies  of  affected  extravagance,  as  it  really 
was ;  and  the  response  of  the  capitalist  to  it  was  uttered 
without  a  thought  of  producing  an  effect.  Nor  did  it  pro- 
duce any  effect  upon  the  person  to  whom  it  was  addressed. 
Davis  never  attempted  to  construct  a  sewing-machine. 

Among  the  workmen  who  stood  by  and  listened  to  this 
conversation  was  a  young  man  from  the  country,  a  new  hand, 
named  Elias  Howe,  then  twenty  years  old.  The  person 
whom  we  have  named  the  capitalist,  a  well-dressed  and  fine- 
looking  man,  somewhat  consequential  in  his  manners,  was 
an  imposing  figure  in  the  eyes  of  this  youth,  new  to  city 
ways ;  and  he  was  much  impressed  with  the  emphatic  assur- 
ance that  a  fortune  was  in  store  for  the  man  who  should 
invent  a  sewing-machine.  He  was  the  more  struck  with  it, 
because  he  had  already  amused  himself  with  inventing  some 
slight  improvements,  and  recently  he  had  caught  from  Davis 
the  habit  of  meditating  new  devices.  The  spirit  of  invention, 
as  all  mechanics  know,  is  exceedingly  contagious.  One  man 
in  a  shop  who  invents  something  that  proves  successful,  will 
give  the  mania  to  half  his  companions,  and  the  very  appren- 
tices will  be  tinkering  over  a  device  after  their  day's  work  is 
done.  There  were  other  reasons,  also,  why  a  conversation 
so-  trifling  and  accidental  should  have  strongly  impressed 
itself  upon  the  mind  of  this  particular  youth.  Before  that 
day,  the  idea  of  sewing  by  the  aid  of  a  machine  had  never 
occurred  to  him. 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  141 

ELIAS  HOWE,  the  inventor  of  the  sewing-machine,  was 
born  in  1819,  at  Spencer,  in  Massachusetts,  where  his  father 
was  a  farmer  and  miller.  There  was  a  grist-mill,  a  saw-mill, 
and  a  shingle-machine  on  the  place  ;  but  all  of  them  together, 
with  the  aid  of  a  farm,  yielded  but  a  slender  revenue  for  a 
man  blessed  with  eight  children.  It  was  a  custom  in  that 
neighborhood,  as  in  New  England  generally,  forty  years  ago, 
for  families  to  carry  on  some  kind  of  manufacture  at  which 
children  could  assist.  At  six  years  of  age,  Elias  Howe 
worked  with  his  brothers  and  sisters  at  sticking  the  wire 
teeth  into  strips  of  leather  for  "  cards,"  used  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  cotton.  As  soon  as  he  was  old  enough,  he  assisted 
upon  the  farm  and  in  the  mills,  attending  the  district  school 
in  the  winter  months.  He  is  now  of  opinion,  that  it  was  the 
rude  and  simple  mills  belonging  to  his  father,  which  gave 
his  mind  its  bent  toward  machinery ;  but  he  cannot  remem- 
ber that  this  bent  was  very  decided,  nor  that  he  watched  the 
operation  of  the  mills  with  much  attention  to  the  mechanical 
principles  involved.  He  was  a  careless,  play-loving  boy, 
and  the  first  eleven  years  of  his  life  passed  without  an  event 
worth  recording.  At  eleven,  he  went  to  "live  out"  with  a 
farmer  of  the  neighborhood,  intending  to  remain  until  he  was 
twenty-one.  A  kind  of  inherited  lameness  rendered  the  hard 
work  of  a  farmer's  boy  distressing  to  him,  and  after  trying 
it  for  a  year,  he  returned  to  his  father's  house,  and  resumed 
his  place  in  the  mills,  where  he  continued  until  he  was  six- 
teen. 

One  of  his  young  friends,  returning  from  Lowell  about  this 
time,  gave  him  such  a  pleasing  description  of  that  famous 
town,  that  he  was  on  fire  to  go  thither.  In  1835,  with  his 
parents'  reluctant  consent,  he  went  to  Lowell,  and  obtained 
a  learner's  place  in  a  large  manufactory  of  cotton  machinery, 
where  he  remained  until  the  crash  of  1837  closed  the  mills 


142  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

of  Lowell,  ard  sent  him  adrift,  a  seeker  after  work.  He 
went  to  Cambridge,  under  the  shadow  of  venerable  Harvard. 
He  found  employment  there  in  a  large  machine-shop,  and 
was  set  at  work  upon  the  new  hemp-carding  machinery 
invented  by  Professor  Treadwell.  His  cousin,  Nathaniel  P. 
Banks,  since  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives  and 
Major-General,  worked  in  the  same  shop  and  boarded  in  the 
same  house  with  him.  After  working  a  few  months  at  Cam- 
bridge, Elias  Howe  found  employment  more  congenial  in 
Boston,  at  the  shop  of  Ari  Davis,  where  the  conversation 
occurred  which  we  have  just  related. 

Judging  merely  by  appearances,  no  one  would  have  pitched 
upon  him  as  the  person  likely  to  make  one  of  the  revolution- 
izing inventions  of  the  age.  Undersized,  curly-headed,  and 
exceedingly  fond  of  his  joke,  he  was  at  twenty  more  a  boy 
than  a  man.  Nor  was  he  very  proficient  in  his  trade,  nor 
inclined  to  put  forth  extra  exertion.  Steady  labor  was 
always  irksome  to  him ;  and  frequently,  owing  to  the  consti- 
tutional weakness  to  which  we  have  alluded,  it  was  painful. 
He  was  not  the  person  to  seize  an  idea  with  avidity,  and 
work  it  out  with  the  passionate  devotion  of  a  Watt  or  a 
Goodyear.  The  only  immediate  effect  upon  him  of  the  con- 
versation in  the  shop  of  Mr.  Davis  was  to  induce  a  habit  of 
reflecting  upon  the  art  bf  sewing,  watching  the  process  as 
performed  by  hand,  and  wondering  whether  it  was  within  the 
compass  of  the  mechanic  arts  to  do  it  by  machinery.  His 
uppermost  thought,  in  those  years,  was,  What  a  waste  of 
power  to  employ  the  ponderous  human  arm,  and  all  the  intri- 
cate machinery  of  the  fingers,  in  performing  an  operation  so 
simple,  and  for  which  a  robin's  strength  would  sufiice  !  Why 
not  draw  twelve  threads  through  at  once,  or  fifty?  And 
sometimes,  while  visiting  a  shop  where  army  and  navy  cloth- 
ing was  made,  he  would  look  at  the  heaps  of  unsewed  gar- 


HISTOHY    OF    THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  143 

ments,  all  cut  alike,  all  requiring  the  same  stitch,  the  same 
number  of  stitches,  and  the  same  kind  of  seam,  and  say  to 
himself,  "  What  a  pity  this  cannot  be  done  by  machinery  1 
It  is  the  very  work  for  a  machine  to  do."  Such  thoughts, 
however,  only  flitted  through  his  mind  now  and  then ;  he 
was  still  far  from  any  serious  attempt  to  construct  a  machine 
for  sewing  up  the  blue  trousers. 

At  twenty-one,  being  still  a  journeyman  machinist,  (Barn- 
ing  nine  dollars  a  week,  he  married;  and,  in  time,  children 
came  with  inconvenient  frequency.  Nine  dollars  is  a  fixed- 
quantity,  or,  rather,  it  was  then;  and  the  addition  of  three 
little  mouths  to  be  fed  from  it,  and  three  little  backs  to  be 
clothed  by  it,  converted  the  vivacious  father  into  a  thought- 
ful and  plodding  citizen.  His  day's  labor  at  this  time, 
when  he  was  upon  heavy  work,  was  so  fatiguing  to  him, 
that,  on  reaching  his  home,  he  would  sometimes  be  too 
exhausted  to  eat,  and  he  would  go  to  bed,  longing,  as  we 
have  heard  him  say,  "to  lie  in  bed  for  ever  and  ever."  It 
was  the  pressure  of  poverty  and  this  extreme  fatigue,  that 
caused  him,  about  the  year  1843,  to  set  about  the  work  of 
inventing  the  machine  which,  he  had  heard  four  years 
before,  would  be  "an  independent  fortune"  to  the  inventor. 
Then  it  was  that  he  caught  the  inventor's  mania,  which 
gives  its  victims  no  rest  and  no  peace  till  they  have  accom- 
plished the  work  to  which  they  have  abandoned  themselves. 

He  wasted  many  months  on  a  false  scent.  When  he 
began  to  experiment,  his  only  thought  was  to  invent  a 
machine  which  should  do  what  he  saw  his  wife  doing  when 
she  sewed.  He  took  it  for  granted  that  sewing  must  be 
that,  and  his  first  device  was  a  needle  pointed  at  both  ends, 
with  the  eye  in  the  middle,  that  should  work  up  and  down 
through  the  cloth,  and  carry  the  thread  through  it  at  each 
thrust.  Hundreds  of  hours,  by  night  and  day,  he  brooded 


144  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

over  this  conception,  and  cut  many  a  basket  of  chips  in  the 
endeavor  to  make  something  that  would  work  such  a  needle 
so  as  to  form  the  common  stitch.  He  could  not  do  it. 
One  day,  in  1844,  the  thought  flashed  upon  him,  Is  it  nec- 
essary that  a  machine  should  imitate  the  performance  of  the 
hand?  May  there  not  be  another  stitch?  This  was  the 
crisis  of  the  invention.  The  idea  of  using  two  threads,  and 
forming  a  stitch  by  the  aid  of  a  shuttle  and  a  curved  needle, 
with  the  eye  near  the  point,  soon  occurred  to  him,  and  he 
felt  that  he  had  invented  a  sewing-machine.  It  was  in  the 
month  of  October,  1844,  that  he  was  able  to  convince  him- 
self,  by  a  rough  model  of  wood  and  wire,  that  such  a 
machine  as  he  had  projected  would  sew. 

At  this  time  he  had  ceased  to  be  a  journeyman  mechanic. 
His  father  had  removed  to  Cambridge  to  establish  a  machine 
for  cutting  palm-leaf  into  strips  for  hats,  —  a  machine 
invented  by  a  brother  of  the  elder  Howe.  Father  and  son 
were  living  in  the  same  house,  into  the  garret  of  which  the 
son  had  put  a  lathe  and  a  few  -  machinists'  tools,  and  was 
doing  a  little  work  on  his  own  account.  His  ardor  in  the 
work  of  invention  robbed  him,  however,  of  many  hours  that 
might  have  been  employed,  his  friends  thought,  to  better 
advantage  by  the  father  of  a  family.  He  was  extremely 
poor,  and  his  father  had  lost  his  palm-leaf  machine  by  a  fire. 
With  an  invention  in  his  head  that  has  since  given  him 
more  than  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  a  single  year, 
and  which  is  now  yielding  a  profit  to  more  than  one  firm 
of  a  thousand  dollars  a  day,  he  could  scarcely  provide  for 
his  little  family  the  necessaries  of  life.  Nor  could  his  inven- 
tion be  tested,  except  by  making  a  machine  of  steel  and 
iron,  with  the  exactness  and  finish  of  a  clock.  At  the  pres- 
ent time,  with  a  machine  before  him  for  a  model,  a  good 
mechanic  could  not,  with  his  ordinary  tools,  construct  a 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  145 

sewing-machine  in  less  than  two  months,  nor  at  a  less 
expense  th/m  three  hundred  dollars.  Elias  Howe  had  only 
his  model  in  his  head,  and  he  had  not  money  enough  to  pay 
for  the  raw  material  requisite  for  one  machine. 

There  was  living  then  at  Cambridge  a  young  friend  and 
schoolmate  of  the  inventor,  named  George  Fisher,  a  coal 
and  wood  merchant,  who  had  recently  inherited  some  prop- 
erty, and  was  not  disinclined  to  speculate  with  some  of  it. 
The  two  friends  had  been  in  the  habit  of  conversing 
together  upon  the  project  of  the  sewing-machine.  When 
the  inventor  had  reached  his  final  conception,  in  the  fall  of 
1844,  he  succeeded  in  convincing  George  Fisher  of  its  feasi- 
bility, which  led  to  a  partnership  between  them  for  bring- 
ing the  invention  into  use.  The  terms  of  this  partnership 
were  these  :  George  Fisher  was  to  receive  into  his  house 
Elias  Howe  and  his  family,  board  them  while  Elias  was 
making  the  machine,  give  up  his  garret  for  a  workshop, 
and  provide  money  for  material  and  tools  to  the  extent  of 
five  hundred  dollars  ;  in  return  for  which,  he  was  to  become 
the  proprietor  of  one  half  the  patent,  if  the  machine  proved 
to  be  worth  patenting.  Early  in  December,  1844,  Elias 
Howe  moved  into  the  house  of  George  Fisher,  set  up  his 
shop  in  the  garret,  gathered  materials  about  him,  and  went 
to  work.  It  was  a  very  small,  low  garret,  but  it  sufficed  for 
one  zealous,  brooding  workman,  who  did  not  wish  for  gos- 
siping visitors. 

It  is  strange  how  the  great  things  come  about  in  this 
world.  This  George  Fisher,  by  whose  timely  aid  such  an 
inestimable  boon  was  conferred  upon  womankind,  was  led 
into  the  enterprise  as  much  by  good  nature  as  by  expecta- 
tion of  profit,  and  it  was  his  easy  acquisition  of  his  money 
that  made  it  easy  for  him  to  risk  it.  So  far  as  we  know, 
neither  of  the  partners  indulged  in  any  dream  of  beuevo- 


146  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

lence.  Howe  wanted  to  invent  a  sewing-machine  to  deliver 
himself  from  that  painful  daily  toil,  and  Fisher  was  inclined 
to  aid  an  old  friend,  and  not  disinclined  to  own  a  share  in 
a  valuable  patent.  The  greatest  doers  of  good  have  usually 
proceeded  in  the  same  homely  spirit.  Thus  Shakespeare 
wrote,  thus  Columbus  sailed,  thus  Watt  invented,  thus  New- 
ton discovered.  It  seems,  too,  that  George  Fisher  was 
Elias  Howe's  only  convert.  "I  believe,"  testified  Fisher, 
in  one  of  the  great  sewing-machine  suits,  "  I  was  the  only 
one  of  his  neighbors  and  friends  in  Cambridge  that  had  any 
confidence  in  the  success  of  the  invention.  He  was  gen- 
erally looked  upon  as  very  visionary  in  undertaking  any- 
thing of  the  kind,  and  I  was  thought  very  foolish  in  assist- 
ing him."  It  is  the  old  story. 

All  the  winter  of  1844-45  Mr.  Howe  worked  at  his 
machine.  His  conception  of  what  he  intended  to  produce 
was  so  clear  and  complete,  that  he  was  little  delayed  by 
failures,  but  worked  on  with  almost  as  much  certainty  and 
steadiness  as  though  he  had  a  model  before  him.  In  April, 
he  sewed  a  seam  by  his  machine.  By  the  middle  of  May, 
1845,  he  had  completed  his  work.  In  July,  he  sewed  by 
his  machine  all  the  seams  of  two  suits  of  woollen  clothes, — 
one  suit  for  Mr.  Fisher  and  the  other  for  himself,  the  sew- 
ing of  both  of  which  outlasted  the  cloth.  This  first  of  all 
sewing-machines,  after  crossing  the  ocean  many  times,  and 
figuring  as  a  dumb  but  irrefutable  witness  in  many  a  court, 
may  still  be  seen  at  Mr.  Howe's  office  in  Broadway,  where, 
within  these  few  weeks,  it  has  sewed  seams  in  cloth  at 
the  rate  of  three  hundred  stitches  a  minute.  It  is  agreed 
by  all  disinterested  persons  (Professor  Renwick  among 
others)  who  have  examined  this  machine,  that  Elias  Howe, 
in  making  it,  carried  the  invention  of  the  sewing-machine 
farther  on  towards  its  complete  and  final  utility,  than  any 


HISTORY  OF  THE   SEWING-MACHINE.  147 

other  inventor  has  ever  brought  a  first-rate  invention  at  the 
first  trial.  It  is  a  little  thing,  that  first  machine,  which  goes 
into  a  box  of  the  capacity  of  about  a  cubic  foot  and  a  half. 
Every  contrivance  in  it  has  been  since  improved,  and  new 
devices  have  been  added ;  but  no  successful  sewing- 
machine  has  ever  been  made,  of  all  the  seven  hundred  thou- 
sand now  in  existence,  which  does  not  contain  some  of  the 
essential  devices  of  this  first  attempt.  We  make  this  asser- 
tion without  hesitation. or  reserve,  because  it  is,  we  believe, 
the  one  point  upon  which  all  the  great  makers  are  agreed. 
Judicial  decisions  have  repeatedly  affirmed  it. 

Like  all  the  other  great  inventors,  Mr.  Howe  found  that, 
when  he  had  completed  his  machine,  his  difficulties  had  but 
begun.  After  he  had  brought  the  machine  to  the  point  of 
making  a  few  stitches,  he  went  to  Boston  one  day  to  get  a 
tailor  to  come  to  Cambridge  and  arrange  some  cloth  for  sew- 
ing, and  give  his  opinion  as  to  the  quality  of  the  work  done 
by  the  machine.  The  comrades  of  the  man  to  whom  he  first 
applied,  dissuaded  him  from  going,  alleging  that  a  sewing- 
machine,  if  it  worked  well,  must  necessarily  reduce  the 
whole  fraternity  of  tailors  to  beggary ;  and  this  proved  to 
be  the  unchangeable  conviction  of  the  tailors  for  the  next 
ten  years.  It  is  probable  that  the  machines  first  made  would 
have  been  destroyed  by  violence,  but  for  another  fixed 
opinion  of  the  tailors,  which  was,  that  no  machine  could  be 
made  that  would  really  answer  the  purpose.  It  seems 
strange  now,  that  the  tailors  of  Boston  could  have  persisted 
so  long  in  such  an  opinion ;  for  Mr.  Howe,  a  few  weeks 
after  he  had  finished  his  first  model,  gave  them  an  oppor- 
tunity to  see  what  it  could  do.  He  placed  his  little  engine 
in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Quincy  Hall  Clothing  Manufac- 
tory, and,  seating  himself  before  it,  offered  to  sew  up  any 
seam  that  might  be  brought  to  him.  One  unbelieving  tailor 


148  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE, 

after  another,  brought  a  garment,  and  saw  its  long  seams 
sewed  perfectly,  at  the  rate  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  stitches 
a  minute ;  which  was  about  seven  times  as  fast  as  the  work 
could  be  done  by  hand.  For  two  weeks  he  sat  there  daily, 
and  sewed  up  seams  for  all  who  chose  to  bring  them  to  him. 
He  amused  himself,  .at  intervals,  in  executing  rows  of  orna- 
mental stitching,  and  he  showed  the  strength  of  the  machine 
by  sewing  the  thick,  plaited  skirts  of  frock-coats  to  the 
bodies.  At  last,  he  challenged  five  of  the  swiftest  seam- 
stresses in  the  establishment  to  sew  a  race  with  the  machine. 
Ten  seams  of  equal  length  were  prepared  for  sewing,  five  of 
which  were  laid  by  the  machine,  and  the  other  five  given  to 
the  girls.  The  gentleman  who  held  the  watch,  and  who  was 
to  decide  the  wager,  testified,  upon  oath,  that  the  five  girls 
were  the  fastest  sewers  that  could  be  found,  and  that  they 
sewed  "as  fast  as  they  could,  —  much  faster  than  they  were 
in  the  habit  of  sewing,"  —  faster  than  they  could  have  kept 
on  for  one  hour.  Nevertheless,  Mr.  Howe  finished  his  five 
seams  a  little  sooner  than  the  girls  finished  their  five ;  and 
the  umpire,  who  was  himself  a  tailor,  has  sworn,  that  "  the 
work  done  on  the  machine  was  the  neatest  and  strongest." 

Upon  reading  testimony  like  this,  we  wonder  that  manu- 
facturers did  not  instantly  set  Mr.  Howe  at  work  making 
sewing-machines.  Not  one  was  ordered.  Not  a  tailor 
encouraged  him  by  word  or  deed.  Some  objected  that  the 
machine  did  not  make  the  whole  garment.  Others  dreaded 
to  encounter  the  fierce  opposition  of  the  journeymen.  Others 
really  thought  it  would  beggar  all  hand-sewers,  and  refrained 
from  using  it  on  principle.  Others  admitted  the  utility  of 
the  machine  and  the  excellence  of  the  work  done  by  it ;  but, 
said  they,  M  We  are  doing  well  as  we  are,  and  fear  to  make 
such  a  change."  The  great  cost  of  the  machine  was  a  most 
serious  obstacle  to  its  introduction.  A  year  or  two  since, 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING— MACHINE.  149 

Mr.  Howe  caused  a  copy  of  his  first  machine  to  be  made 
for  exhibition  in  his  window,  and  it  cost  him  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars.  In  1845,  he  could  not  have  furnished  his 
machine  for  less  than  five  hundred  dollars,  and  a  large 
clothier  or  shirt-maker  would  have  required  thirty  or  forty 
of  them. 

The  inventor  was  not  disheartened  by  the  result  of  the 
introduction  of  the  machine.  The  next  thing  was  to  get  the 
invention  patented,  and  Mr.  Howe  again  shut  himself  up  in 
George  Fisher's  garret  for  three  or  four  mouths,  and  made 
another  machine  for  deposit  in  the  Patent  Office.  In  the 
spring  of  1846,  there  being  no  prospect  of  revenue  from  the 
invention,  he  engaged  as  "  engineer  "  upon  one  of  the  rail- 
roads terminating  at  Boston,  and  "  drove  "  a  locomotive  daily 
for  some  weeks ;  but  the  labor  proved  too  much  for  his 
strength,  and  he  was  compelled  to  give  it  up.  Late  in  the 
summer,  the  model  and  the  documents  being  ready  for  the 
Patent  Office,  the  two  associates  treated  themselves  to  a 
journey  to  Washington,  where  the  wonderful  machine  was 
exhibited  at  a  fair,  with  no  results  except  to  amuse  the 
crowd.  September  10,  1846,  Jfche  patent  was  issued,  and 
soon  after  the  young  men  returned  to  Cambridge. 

George  Fisher  was  now  totally  discouraged.  He  had 
maintained  the  inventor  and  his  family  for  many  months ; 
he  had  provided  the  money  for  the  tools  and  material  for 
two  machines ;  he  had  paid  the  expense  of  getting  the 
patent,  and  of  the  journey  to  Washington  ;  he  had  advanced 
in  all  about  two  thousand  dollars ;  and  he  saw  not  the 
remotest  probability  of  the  invention  becoming  profitable. 
Elias  Howe  moved  back,  to  his  father's  house,  and  George 
Fisher  considered  his  advances  in  the  light  of  a  dead  loss. 
"I  had  lost  confidence,"  he  has  since  testified,  "in  the 
machined  ever  paying  anything." 


150  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

But  mothers  and  inventors  do  not  give  up  their  offspring 
so.  America  having  rejected  the  invention,  Mr.  Howe 
resolved  to  offer  it  to  England.  In  October,  1846,  his 
brother,  Amasa  B.  Howe,  with  the  assistance  of  their  father, 
took  passage  in  the  steerage  of  a  sailing  packet,  and  con- 
veyed one  of  the  machines  to  London.  An  Englishman  was 
the  first  manufacturer  who  had  faith  enough  in  the  Ameri- 
can sewing-machine  to  invest  money  in  it.  In  Cheapside, 
Amasa  Howe  came  upon  the  shop  of  William  Thomas,  who 
employed,  according  to  hte  own  account,  five  thousand  per- 
sons in  the  manufacture  of  corsets,  umbrellas,  valises,  carpet 
bags,  and  shoes.  William  Thomas  examined  and  approved 
the  machine.  Necessity,  as  poor  Eichard  remarks,  cannot 
make  a  good  bargain ;  but  the  bargain  which  it  made  on  this 
occasion,  through  the  agency  of  Amasa  B.  Howe,  was  sig- 
nally bad.  He  sold  to*  Mr.  Thomas,  for  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  sterling,  the  machine  he  had  brought  with  him, 
and  the  right  to  use  as  many  others  in  his  own  business  as  he 
desired.  There  was  also  a  verbal  understanding  that  Mr. 
Thomas  was  to  patent  the  invention  in  England,  and,  if  the 
machine  came  into  use  there,  he  was  to  pay  the  inventor 
three  pounds  on  every  machine  sold.  That  was  an  excellent 
day's  work  for  William  Thomas  of  Cheapside.  The  verbal 
part  of  the  bargain  has  never  been  carried  out.  He  patented 
the  invention ;  and  ever  since  the  machines  began  to  be  used, 
all  sewing-machines  made  in  England,  or  imported  into  Eng- 
land, have  paid  tribute  to  him  at  the  rate  of  ten  pounds  or 
less  for  each  machine.  Elias  Howe  is  of  opinion  that  the 
investment  of  that  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  has  yielded 
a  profit  of  one  million  dollars.  Mr.  Thomas  further  proposed 
to  engage  the  inventor  to  adapt  the  machine  to  the  work 
upon  corsets,  offering  him  the  munificent  stipend  of  three 
pounds  a  week,  and  to  defray  the  expense  of  workshop, 
tools,  and  material. 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  151 

Amasa  B.  Howe  returned  to  Cambridge  with  this  offer. 
America  being  still  insensible  to  the  charms  of  the  new 
invention,  and  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  having  been 
immediately  absorbed  by  the  long-accumulating  necessities 
of  the  family,  and  there  being  no  prospect  of  advantageous 
employment  at  home,  Elias  Howe  accepted  the  offer,  and 
both  brothers  set  sail  for  London,  February  5,  1847.  Thej 
went  in  the  steerage,  and  cooked  their  own  provisions. 
William  Thomas  provided  a  shop  and  its  requisites,  and 
even  advanced  money  for  the  passage  to  England  of  the  in- 
ventor's family,  who  joined  him  soon, — wife  and  three 
children.  After  eight  months  of  labor,  the  inventor  suc- 
ceeded in  adopting  his  machine  to  the  purposes  of  the  stay- 
maker  ;  and  when  this  was  done,  the  stay-maker  apparently 
desired  to  get  rid  of  the  inventor.  He  required  him  to  do 
the  miscellaneous  repairs,  and  took  the  tone  with  him  which 
the  ignorant  purse-holder,  in  all  lands,  is  accustomed  to  hold 
in  his  dealings  with  those  to  whom  he  pays  wages.  The 
Yankee,  of  course,  resented  this  behavior,  and  William 
Thomas  discharged  Elias  Howe  from  his  employment. 

To  be  a  poor  stranger,  with  a  sick  wife  and  three  children 
in  America,  is  to  be  in  a  purgatory  that  is  provided  with  a 
practicable  door  into  paradise.  To  be  such  a  person  in 
London,  is  to  be  in  a  hell  without  visible  outlet. 

Since  undertaking  to  write  this  little  history  of  the  sew- 
ing-machine, we  have  gone  over  about  thirty  thousand  pages 
of  printed  testimony,  taken  in  the  numerous  suits  to  which 
sewing-machine  patents  have  given  rise.  Of  all  these  pages, 
the  most  interesting  are  those  from  which  we  can  gather  the 
history  of  Elias  Howe  during  the  next  few  months.  From  a 
chance  acquaintance,  named  Charles  Inglis,  a  coach-maker, 
who  proved  to  be  a  true  friend,  he  hired  a  small  room  for  a 
work-shop,  in  which,  after  borrowing  a  few  tools,  he  began 

10 


152  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

to  construct  his  fourth  sewing-machine.  Long  before  it  was 
finished,  he  saw  that  he  must  reduce  his  expenses  or  leave 
his  machine  unfinished.  From  three  rooms,  he  removed  his 
family  to  one,  and  that  a  small  one  in  the  cheapest  quarter 
of  Surrey.  Nor  did  that  economy  suffice  ;  and  he  resolved 
to  send  his  family  home  while  he  could,  and  trust  to  the 
machine  in  hand  for  the  means  to  follow  them. 

"Before  his  wife  left  London,"  testifies  Mr.  Inglis,  "he 
had  frequently  borrowed  money  from  me  in  sums  of  five 
pounds,  and  requested  me  to  -get  him  credit  for  provisions. 
On  the  evening  of  Mrs.  Howe's  departure,  the  night  was 
very  wet  and  stormy,  and,  her  health  being  delicate,  she 
was  unable  to  walk  to  the  ship.  He  had  no  money  to  pay 
the  cab-hire,  and  he  borrowed  a  few  shillings  from  me  to  pay 
it,  which  he  repaid  by  pledging  some  of  his  clothing.  Some 
linen  came  home  from  his  washerwoman  for  his  wife  and 
children  on  the  day  of  her  departure.  She  could  not  take  it 
with  her  on  account  of  not  having  money  to  pay  the  woman." 
After  the  departure  of  his  family,  the  solitary  inventor  was 
still  more  severely  pinched.  w  He  has  borrowed  a  shilling 
from  me,"  says  Mr.  Inglis,  "for  the  purpose  of  buying  beans, 
which  I  saw  him  cook  and  eat  in  his  own  room."  After 
three  or  four  months  of  labor,  the  machine  was  finished.  It 
was  worth  fifty  pounds.  The  only  customer  he  could  find 
for  it  was  a  working  man  of  his  acquaintance,  who  offered 
five  pounds  for  it,  if  he  could  have  time  to  pay  it  in.  The 
inventor  was  obliged  to  accept  this  offer.  The  purchaser 
gave  his  note  for  the  five  pounds,  which  Charles  Inglis  suc- 
ceeded in  selling  to  another  mechanic  for  four  pounds.  To 
pay  his  debts  and  his  expenses  home,  Mr.  Howe  pawned  his 
precious  first  machine  and  his  letters-patent.  '<  He  drew  a 
hand-cart,  with  his  baggage  on  it,  to  the  ship,  to  save  the 
expense  of  cartage  " ;  and  again  he  took  passage  in  the  steer- 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  153 

age,  along  with  his  English  friend,  Charles  Inglis.  His 
brother  Amasa  had  long  before  returned  to  America. 

In  April,  1849,  Elias  Howe  landed  in  New  York,  after 
an  absence  of  two  years  from  the  country,  with  half  a  crown 
in  his  pocket.  Four  years  had  nearly  elapsed  since  the 
completion  of  his  first  machine,  and  this  small  piece  of  silver 
was  the  net  result  of  his  labors  upon  that  invention.  He  and 
his  friend  went  to  one  of  the  cheapest  emigrant  boarding- 
houses,  and  Elias  Howe  sought  employment  in  the  machine- 
shops,  which  luckily  he  found  without  delay.  The  news 
reached  him  soon  that  his  wife  was  dying  of  consumption, 
but  he  had  not  the  money  for  a  journey  to  Cambridge.  In 
a  few  days,  however,  he  received  ten  dollars  from  his  father, 
and  he  was  thus  enabled  to  reach  his  wife's  bedside,  and 
receive  her  last  breath.  He  had  no  clothes  except  those  he 
daily  wore,  and  he  was  obliged  to  borrow  a  suit  from  his 
brother-in-law  in  which  to  appear  at  the  funeral.  It  was 
remarked  by  his  old  friends,  that  his  natural  gayety  of  dis- 
position was  quite  quenched  by  the  severity  of  his  recent 
trials.  He  was  extremely  downcast  and  worn.  He  looked 
like  a  man  just  out  after  a  long  and  agonizing  sickness. 
Soon  came  the  intelligence  that  the  ship,  in  which  he  had 
embarked  all  his  household  goods,  had  been  wrecked  off  Cape 
Cod,  and  was  a  total  loss. 

But  now  he  was  among  friends,  who  hastened  to  relieve 
his  immediate  necessities,  and  who  took  care  of  his  children. 
He  was  soon  at  work ;  not,  indeed,  at  his  beloved  machine, 
but  at  work  which  his  friends  considered  much  more 
rational.  He  was  again  a  journeyman  machinist  at  weekly 
wages. 

As  nature  never  bestows  two  eminent  gifts  upon  the  same 
individual,  the  man  who  makes  a  great  invention  is  seldom 
the  man  who  prevails  upon  the  public  to  use  it.  Every  Watt 


154  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

needs  his  Boulton.  Neither  George  Fisher  nor  Elias  Howe 
possessed  the  executive  force  requisite  for  so  difficult  a  piece 
of  work  as  the  introduction  of  a  machine  which  then  cost 
two  or  three  hundred  dollars  to  make,  and  upon  which  a 
purchaser  had  to  take  lessons  as  upon  the  piano,  and  which 
the  whole  body  of  tailors  regarded  with  dread,  aversion,  or 
contempt.  It  was  reserved,  therefore,  for  other  men  to  edu- 
cate the  people  into  availing  themselves  of  this  exquisite, 
labor-saving  apparatus. 

Upon  his  return  home,  after  his  residence  in  London, 
Elias  Howe  discovered,  much  to  his  surprise,  that  the  sew- 
ing-machine had  become  celebrated,  though  its  inventor 
appeared  forgotten.  Several  ingenious  mechanics,  who  had 
only  heard  or  read  of  a  machine  for  sewing,  and  others  who 
had  seen  the  Howe  machine,  had  turned  their  attention  to 
inventing  in  the  same  direction,  or  to  improving  upon  Mr. 
Howe's  devices.  We  have  before  us  three  hand-bills,  which 
show  that,  in  1849,  a  sewing-machine  was  carried  about  in 
Western  New  York,  and  exhibited  as  a  curiosity,  at  a  charge 
of  twelve  and  a  half  cents  for  admission.  At  Ithaca,  the  fol- 
lowing bill  was  posted  about  in  May,  1849,  a  few  weeks  after 
the  inventor's  return  from  Europe  : — 

A    GREAT 

CURIOSITY ! ! 

The 

YANKEE    SEWING-MACHINE 
is  now 

EXHIBITING 
AT  THIS   PLACE 

from 

8   A.   M.    tO   5   P.   M. 

The  public  were  informed  by  other  bills,  that  this  won- 
derful machine  could  make  a  pair  of  pantaloons  in  forty  min- 


HISTOEY   OP   THE   SEWING-MACHINE.  155 

utes,  and  do  the  work  of  six  hands.  The  people  of  Ithaca, 
it  appears,  attended  the  exhibition  in  great  numbers,  and 
many  ladies  carried  home  specimens  of  the  sewing,  which 
they  preserved  as  curiosities.  But  this  was  not  all.  Some 
machinists  and  others  in  Boston,  and  elsewhere,  were  making 
sewing-machines  in  a  rude,  imperfect  manner,  several  of 
which  had  been  sold  to  manufacturers,  and  were  in  daily 
operation. 

The  inventor,  upon  inspecting  these  crude  products,  saw 
that  they  all  contained  the  devices  which  he  had  first  com- 
bined and  patented.  Poor  as  he  was,  he  was  not  disposed 
to  submit  to  this  infringement,  and  he  began  forthwith  to 
prepare  for  war  against  the  infringers.  When  he  entered 
upon  this  litigation,  he  was  a  journeyman  machinist  i  his 
machine  and  his  letters-patent  were  in  pawn,  three  thousand 
miles  away,  and  the  patience,  if  not  the  purses,  of  his  friends 
was  exhausted.  When  the  contest  ended,  a  leading  branch 
of  the  national  industry  was  tributary  to  him.  The  first 
step  was  to  get  back  from  England  that  first  machine, 
and  the  document  issued  from  the  Patent  Office.  In 
the  course  of  the  summer  of  1849,  he  contrived  to  raise 
the  hundred  dollars  requisite  for  their  deliverance ;  and 
the  Hon.  Anson  Burlingame,  who  was  going  to  London, 
kindly  undertook  to  hunt  them  up  in  the  wilderness  of 
Surrey.  He  found  them,  and  sent  them  home  in  the  autumn 
of  the  same  year.  The  inventor  wrote  polite  letters  to  the 
infringers,  warning  them  to  desist,  and  offering  to  sell  them 
licenses  to  continue.  All  but  one  of  them,  it  appears,  were 
disposed  to  acknowledge  his  rights,  and  to  accept  his  pro- 
posal. That  one  induced  the  others  to  resist,  and  nothing 
remained  but  a  resort  to  the  courts.  Assisted  by  his  father, 
the  inventor  began  a  suit ;  but  he  was  soon  made  aware  that 
justice  is  a  commodity  much  beyond  the  means  of  a  journey  - 


156  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

man  mechanic.  He  tried  to  reawaken  the  faith  of  George 
Fisher,  and  induce  him  to  furnish  the  sinews  of  war ;  but 
George  Fisher  had  had  enough  of  the  sewing-machine ;  he 
would  sell  his  half  of  the  patent  for  what  it  had  cost  him ; 
but  he  would  advance  no  more  money.  Mr.  Howe  then 
looked  about  for  some  one  who  would  buy  George  Fisher's 
share.  He  found  three  men  who  agreed  to  do  this,  —  and 
tried  to  do  it,  but  could  not  raise  the  money. 

The  person  to  whom  he  was  finally  indebted  for  the  means 
of  securing  his  rights,  was  George  W.  Bliss,  of  Massachusetts, 
who  was  prevailed  upon  to  buy  Mr.  Fisher's  share  of  the 
patent,  and  to  advance  the  money  needful  for  carrying  on 
the  suits.  He  did  this  only  as  a  speculation.  He  thought 
there  might  be  something  in  this  new  notion  of  sewing  by 
machinery,  and,  if  there  was,  the  machine  must  become 
universal,  and  yield  large  revenues.  This  might  be ;  he 
even  thought  it  probable ;  still,  so  weak  was  his  faith,  that 
he  consented  to  embark  in  the  enterprise  only  on  condition 
of  his  being  secured  against  loss  by  a  mortgage  on  the  farm 
of  the  inventor's  father.  This  generous  parent  —  who  is 
still  living  in  Cambridge  —  came  once  more  to  the  rescue, 
and  thus  secured  his  son's  fortune.  The  suits  went  on ;  but, 
as  they  went  on  at  the  usual  pace  of  patent  cases,  the 
inventor  had  abundant  leisure  to  push  his  invention  out  of 
doors. 

Towards  the  close  of  1850,  we  find  him  in  New  York, 
superintending  the  construction  of  fourteen  sewing-machines 
at  a  shop  in  Gold  Street,  adjoining  which  he  had  a  small 
office,  furnished  with  a  five-dollar  desk  and  two  fifty-cent 
chairs.  One  of  those  machines  was  exhibited  at  the  fair  in 
Castle  Garden  in  October,  1851,  where,  for  the  space  of  two 
weeks,  it  sewed  gaiters,  pantaloons,  and  other  work.  Sev- 
eral of  them  were  sold  to  a  boot-maker  in  Worcester,  who 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  157 

used  them  for  sewing  boot-legs,  with  perfect  success.  Two 
or  three  others  were  daily  operated  in  Broadway,  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  purchasers.  We  can  say,  therefore,  of 
Elias  Howe,  that  besides  inventing  the  sewing-machine,  and 
besides  making  the  first  machine  with  his  own  hands,  he 
brought  his  invention  to  the  point  of  its  successful  employ- 
ment in  manufacture. 

While  he  was  thus  engaged,  events  occurred  which 
seriously  threatened  to  rob  him  of  all  the  benefit  of  his  inven- 
tion. The  infringers  of  his  patent  were  not  men  of  largo 
means  nor  of  extraordinary  energy,  and  they  had  no  w  case  " 
whatever.  There  was  the  machine  which  Elias  Howe  had 
made  in  1845,  there  were  his  letters-patent,  and  all  the 
sewing-machines  then  known  to  be  in  existence  were  essen- 
tially the  same  as  his.  But  in  August,  1 850,  a  man  became 
involved  with  the  infringers  who  was  of  very  different  mettle 
from  those  steady-going  Yankees,  and  capable  of  .carrying 
on  a  much  more  vigorous  warfare  than  they.  This  was  that 
Isaac  Merritt  Singer,  who  has  since  so  often  astonished  the 
Fifth  Avenue,  and  is  now  amusing  Paris,  by  the  oddity  and 
splendor  of  his  equipages.  He  was  then  a  poor  and  baffled 
adventurer.  He  had  been  an  actor  and  manager  of  a  theatre, 
and  had  tried  his  hand  at  various  enterprises,  none  of  which 
had  been  very  successful.  In  1850,  he  invented  (as  he  has 
since  sworn)  a  carving-machine,  and  having  obtained  an 
order  for  one  from  Boston,  he  made  it,  and  took  it  himself 
to  Boston.  In  the  shop  in  which  he  placed  his  carving- 
machine,  he  saw,  for  the  first  time,  several  sewing-machines, 
brought  there  for  repairs.  Orson  C.  Phelps,  the  proprietor 
of  the  shop  (Mr.  Singer  says) ,  showed  him  one  of  these 
machines,  and  said  to  him  that,  if  it  could  be  improved  so 
as  to  render  it  capable  of  doing  a  greater  variety  of  work, 
"  it  would  be  a  good  thing  " ;  and  if  Mr.  Singer  could  accom- 


158  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

plish  this,  he  could  get  more  money  from  sewing  than  from 
carving-machines.  Whereupon,  Mr.  Singer  contemplated 
the  apparatus,  and  at  night  meditated  upon  it,  with  so  much 
success,  that  he  was  able  in  the  morning  to  exhibit  a  drawing 
of  an  improved  machine.  This  sketch  (so  he  swears)  con- 
tained three  original  devices,  which,  to  this  day,  form  part  of 
the  sewing-machine  made  by  the  Singer  Company.  The 
sketch  being  approved,  the  next  thing  was  to  construct  a 
model.  Mr.  Singer  having  no  money,  the  purchaser  of  his 
carving-machine  agreed  to  advance  fifty  dollars  for  the  pur- 
pose ;  upon  which  Mr.  Singer  flew  at  the  work  like  a  tiger. 
"I  worked,"  he  says,  "day  and  night,  sleeping  but  three 
or  four  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  and  eating  generally 
but  once  a  day,  as  I  knew  I  must  get  a  machine  made  for 
forty  dollars,  or  not  get  it  at  all.  The  machine  was  com- 
pleted the  night  of  the  eleventh  day  from  the  day  it  was 
commenced.  About  nine  o'clock  that  evening,  we  got  the 
parts  of  the  machine  together,  and  commenced  trying  it. 
The  first  attempt  to  sew  was  unsuccessful ;  and  the  workmen, 
who  were  tired  out  with  almost  unremitting  work,  left  me, 
one  by  one,  intimating  that  it  was  a  failure.  I  continued 
trying  the  machine,  with  Zieber "  (who  furnished  the  forty 
dollars)  "to  hold  the  lamp  for  me,  but,  in  the  nervous  con- 
dition to  which  I  had  been  reduced  by  incessant  work  and 
anxiety,  was  unsuccessful  in  getting  the  machine  to  sew 
tight  stitches.  About  midnight,  I  started  with  Zieber  to  the 
hotel  where  I  boarded.  Upon  the  way,  we  sat  down  on  a 
pile  of  boards,  and  Zieber  asked  me  if  I  had  noticed  that  the 
loose  loops  of  thread  on  the  upper  side  of  the  cloth  came 
from  the  needle.  It  then  flashed  upon  me  that  I  had  for- 
gotten to  adjust  the  tension  upon  the  needle  thread.  Zieber 
and  I  went  back  to  the  shop.  I  adjusted  the  tension,  tried 
the  machine,  and  sewed  five  stitches  perfectly,  when  the 


HISTORY   OF   THE   SEWING-MACHINE.'  159 

thread  broke.  The  perfection  of  those  stitches  satisfied  me 
that  the  machine  was  a  success,  and  I  stopped  work,  went 
to  the  hotel,  and  had  a  sound  sleep.  By  three  o'clock  the 
next  day,  I  had  the  machine  finished,  and  started  with  it  to 
New  York,  where  I  employed  Mr.  Charles  M.  Keller  to  get 
out  a  patent  for  it." 

Such  was  the  introduction  to  the  sewing-machine  of  the 
man  whose  energy  and  audacity  forced  the  machine  upon  an 
unbelieving  public.  He  borrowed  a  little  money,  and  form- 
ing a  partnership  with  his  Boston  patron  and  the  machinist 
in  whose  shop  he  had  made  his  model,  began  the  manufac- 
ture of  the  machines.  Great  and  numerous  were  the  diffi- 
culties which  arose  in  his  path,  but,  one  by  one,  he  overcame 
them  all.  He  advertised,  he  travelled,  he  sent  out  agents, 
he  procured  the  insertion  of  articles  in  the  newspapers,  he 
exhibited  the  machine  at  fairs  in  town  and  country.  Several 
times  he  was  upon  the  point  of  failure,  but  in  the  nick  ot 
time  something  always  happened  to  save  him,  and  year  after 
year  he  advanced  toward  an  assured  success.  We  well 
remember  his  early  efforts,  when  he  had  only  the  back  part 
of  a  small  store  in  Broadway,  and  a  little  shop  over  a  rail- 
road depot ;  and  we  remember  also  the  general  incredulity 
with  regard  to  the  value  of  the  machine  with  which  his  name 
was  identified.  Even  after  hearing  him  explain  it  at  great 
length,  we  were  very  far  from  expecting  to  see  him,  one 
day,  riding  to  the  Central  Park  in  a  French  diligence,  drawn 
by  five  horses,  paid  for  by  the  sewing-machine.  Still  less 
did  we  anticipate  that,  within  fourteen  years,  the  Singer 
Company  would  be  selling  two  thousand  sewing-machines  a 
week,  at  a  profit  of  a  thousand  dollars  a  day.  He  was  the 
true  pioneer  of  the  mere  business  of  selling  the  machines, 
and  made  it  easier  for  all  his  subsequent  competitors. 

Mr.  Singer  had  not  been  long  in  the  business  before  he 


160  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

was  reminded  by  Elias  Howe  that  he  was  infringing  his 
patent  of  1846.  The  adventurer  threw  all  his  energy  and 
his  growing  means  into  the  contest  against  the  original  inven- 
tor. The  great  object  of  the  infringing  interest  was  to  dis- 
cover an  earlier  inventor  than  Elias  Howe.  For  this  purpose, 
the  patents  records  of  England,  France,1  and  the  United 
States  were  most  diligently  searched ;  encyclopaedias  were 
examined ;  and  an  attempt  was  even  made  to  show  that  the 
Chinese  had  possessed  a  sewing-machine  for  ages.  Nothing, 
however,  was  discovered  that  would  have  made  a  plausible 
defence,  until  Mr.  Singer  joined  the  infringers.  He  ascer- 
tained that  a  New  York  mechanic,  named  Walter  Hunt,  who 
had  a  small  machine-shop  up  a  narrow  alley  in  Abingdon 
Square,  had  made,  or  tried  to  make,  a  sewing-machine  as 
early  as  1832.  Walter  Hunt  was  found.  He  had  attempted 
to  invent  a  sewing-machine  in  1832 ;  and,  what  was  more 
important,  he  had  hit  upon  the  shuttle  as  the  means  of  form- 
ing the  stitch.  He  said,  too,  that  he  had  made  a  machine 
which  did  sew  a  little,  but  very  imperfectly,  and,  after 
wearying  himself  with  fruitless  experiments,  he  had  thrown 
aside.  Parts  of  this  machine,  after  a  great  deal  of  trouble, 
were  actually  found  among  a  quantity  of  rubbish  in  the 
garret  of  a  house  in  Gold  Street.  Here  was  a  discovery ! 
Could  Mr.  Hunt  take  these  parts,  all  rusty  and  broken,  into 
his  shop,  and  complete  the  machine  as  originally  made,  so 
that  it  would  sew  ?  He  thought  he  could.  Urged  on  by  the 
indefatigable  Singer,  supplied  by  him  with  money,  and  stim- 
ulated by  the  prospect  of  fortune,  Walter  Hunt  tried  hard 
and  long  to  put  his  machine  together ;  and  when  he  found 
that  he  could  not,  he  employed  an  ingenious  inventor  to  aid 
him  in  the  work.  But  their  united  ingenuity  was  unequal  to 
the  performance  of  an  impossibility ;  the  machine  could  not 
be  got  to  sew  a  seam.  The  fragments  found  in  the  garret 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING— MACHINE .  161 

did  indeed  demonstrate  that,  in  1832,  Walter  Hunt  had  been 
upon  the  track  of  the  invention ;  but  they  also  proved  that 
he  had  given  up  the  chase  in  despair,  long  before  coming  up 
with  the  game. 

And  this  the  courts  have  uniformly  held.  In  the  year 
1854,  after  long  trial,  Judge  Sprague,  of  Massachusetts, 
decided  that  "  the  plaintiff's  patent  is  valid,  and  the  defend- 
ant's machine  is  an  infringement."  The  plaintiff  was  Elias 
Howe ;  the  real  infringer,  I.  M.  Singer.  Judge  Sprague 
further  observed,  that  "there  is  no  evidence  in  this  case, 
that  leaves  a  shadow  of  doubt  that,  for  all  the  benefit  con- 
ferred upon  the  public  by  the  introduction  of  a  sewing- 
machine,  the  public  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Howe." 

This  decision  was  made  when  nine  years  had  elapsed  since 
the  completion  of  the  first  machine,  and  when  eight  years  of 
the  term  of  the  first  patent  had  expired.  The  patent,  how- 
ever, even  then,  was  so  little  productive,  that  the  inventor, 
embarrassed  as  he  was,  was  able,  upon  the  death  of  his  part- 
ner, Mr.  Bliss,  to  buy  his  share  of  it.  He  thus  became,  for 
the  first  time,  the  sole  proprietor  of  his  patent ;  and  this 
occurred  just  when  it  was  about  to  yield  a  princely  revenue. 
From  a  few  hundreds  a  year,  his  income  rapidly  increased, 
until  it  went  beyond  two  hundred  thousand  dollars.  He 
received  in  all  not  much  less  than  two  millions.  As  Mr. 
Howe  devoted  twenty-seven  years  of  his  life  to  the  invention 
and  development  of  the  sewing-machine,  the  public  com- 
pensated him  at  the  rate  of  seventy-five  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  It  cost  him,  however,  immense  sums  to  defend  hia 
rights,  and  he  was  very  far  from  being  the  richest  of  the 
sewing-machine  kings.  He  had  the  inconvenient  reputation 
of  being  worth  four  millions,  which  was  exactly  ten  times 
the  value  of  his  estate. 

So  much  for  the  inventor.     In  speaking  of  the  improvers 


162  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

of  the  sewing-machine,  we  know  not  how  to  be  cautious 
enough  ;  for  scarcely  anything  can  be  said  on  that  branch  of 
the  subject  which  some  one  has  not  an  interest  to  deny.  We, 
the  other  day,  looked  over  the  testimony  taken  in  one  of  the 
suits  which  Messrs.  Grover  and  Baker  have  had  to  sustain 
in  defence  of  their  well-known  "  stitch."  The  testimony  in 
that  single  case  fills  two  immense  volumes,  containing  three 
thousand  five  hundred  and  seventy-five  pages.  At  the 
Wheeler  and  Wilson  establishment  in  Broadway,  there  is  a 
library  of  similar  volumes,  resembling  in  appearance  a  quan- 
tity of  London  and  Paris  Directories.  The  Singer  Company 
are  equally  blessed  with  sewing-machine  literature,  and  Mr. 
Howe  had  chests  full  of  it.  We  learn  from  these  volumes 
that  there  is  no  useful  device  connected  with  the  apparatus, 
the  invention  of  which  is  not  claimed  by  more  than  one  per- 
son. And  no  wonder.  If  to-day  the  ingenious  reader  could 
invent  the  slightest  real  improvement  to  the  sewing-machine, 
so  real  that  a  machine  having  it  would  possess  an  obvious 
advantage  over  all  machines  that  had  it  not,  and  he  should 
sell  the  right  to  use  that  improvement  at  so  low  a  rate  as 
fifty  cents  for  each  machine,  he  would  find  himself  in  the 
enjoyment  of  an  income  of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  per 
annum.  The  consequence  is,  that  the  number  of  patents 
already  issued  in  the  United  States  for  sewing-machines,  and 
improvements  in  sewing-machines,  is  about  nine  hundred ! 
Perhaps  thirty  of  these  patents  are  valuable  ;  but  the  great 
improvements  are  not  more  than  ten  in  number,  and  most  of 
those  were  made  in  the  infancy  of  the  machine. 

By  general  consent  of  the  able  men  who  are  now  conduct- 
ing the  sewing-machine  business,  the  highest  place  in  the  list 
of  improvers  is  assigned  to  Allen  B.  Wilson.  This  most  in- 
genious gentleman  completed  a  practical  sewing-machine 
early  in  1849,  without  ever  having  seen  one,  and  without 


HISTORY    OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  163 

having  any  knowledge  of  the  devices  of  Elias  Howe, 
who  was  then  buried  alive  in  London.  Mr.  Wilson,  at 
the  time,  was  a  very  young  journeyman  cabinet-maker, 
living  in  Pittsfield,  Massachusetts.  After  that  desperate 
contest  with  difficulty  which  inventors  usually  experience, 
he  procured  a  patent  for  his  machine,  improved  it,  and 
formed  a  connection  with  a  young  carriage-maker  of  his  ac- 
quaintance, Nathaniel  Wheeler,  who  had  some  capital ;  and 
thus  was  founded  the  great  and  famous  house  of  Wheeler 
and  Wilson,  who  are  now  making  sewing-ma  chines  at  the  rate 
of  about  fifty-three  thousand  a  year.  These  gentlemen  were 
honest  enough  in  opposing  the  claim  of  Elias  Howe,  since 
Mr.  Wilson  knew  himself  to  be  an  original  inventor,  and  he 
employed  devices  not  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Howe's  machine. 
Instead  of  a  shuttle,  he  used  a  "rotating  hook,"  — a  device 
as  ingenious  as  any  in  mechanism.  The"  four-motion  feed," 
too,  was  another  of  Mr.  Wilson's  masterly  inventions,  suffi- 
cient of  itself  to  stamp  him  as  an  inventor  of  genius.  Noth- 
ing, therefore,  was  more  natural  than  that  Messrs.  Wheeler 
and  Wilson  should  regard  Mr.  Howe's  charge  of  infringe- 
ment with  astonishment  and  indignation,  and  join  in  the  con- 
test against  him. 

Messrs.  Grover  and  Baker  were  early  in  the  field.  William 
O.  Grover  was  a  Boston  tailor,  whose  attention  was  directed 
to  the  sewing-machine  soon  after  Mr.  Howe's  return  from 
Europe.  It  was  he  who,  after  numberless  trials,  invented 
the  exquisite  devices  by  which  the  famous  "Grover  and 
Baker  stitch  "  is  formed,  —  a  stitch  which,  for  some  pur- 
poses, is  of  unequalled  utility. 

When,  by  the  decision  of  the  courts,  all  the  makers  had 
become  tributary  to  Elias  Howe,  paying  him  a  certain  sum 
for  each  machine  made,  then  a  most  violent  warfare  broke 
out  among  the  leading  houses;  — Singer  aud  Company, 


164  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Wheeler  and  Wilson,  Grover  and  Baker,  —  each  accusing  the 
others  of  infringement.  At  Albany,  in  1856,  these  causes 
were  to  be  tried ;  and  parties  concerned  saw  before  them  a 
good  three  months'  work  in  cou*t.  By  a  lucky  chance,  one 
member  of  this  happy  family  had  not  entirely  lost  his  temper, 
and  was  still  in  some  degree  capable  of  using  his  intellect. 
It  occurred  to  this  wise  head,  that,  no  matter  who  invented 
first,  or  who  second,  there  were  then  assembled  at  Albany 
the  men  who,  among  them,  held  patents  which  controlled  the 
whole  business  of  making  sewing-machines;  and  that  it 
would  be  infinitely  better  for  them  to  combine  and  'control, 
than  to  contend  with  and  devour  one  another.  They  all 
came  into  this  opinion ;  and  thus  was  formed  the  "  Combina- 
tion," of  which  such  terrible  things  are  uttered  by  the  sur- 
reptitious makers  of  sewing-machines.  Elias  Howe,  who  was 
the  best-tempered  man  in  the  world,  and  only  too  easy  in 
matters  pecuniary,  had  the  complaisance  to  join  this  confed- 
eration, only  insisting  that  at  least  twenty-four  licenses 
should  be  issued  by  it,  so  as  to  prevent  the  manufacture  from 
sinking  into  a  monopoly.  By  the  terms  of  this  agreement, 
Mr.  Howe  was  to  receive  five  dollars  upon  every  machine 
sold  in  the  United  States,  and  one  dollar  upon  each  one 
exported.  The  other  parties  agreed  to  sell  licenses  to  use 
their  various  devices,  or  any  of  them,  at  the  rate  of  fifteen 
dollars  for  each  machine  ;  but  no  license  was  to  be  granted 
without  the  consent  of  all  the  parties.  It  was  further  agreed 
that  part  of  the  license  fees  received  should  be  reserved  as 
a  fund  for  the  prosecution  of  infringers.  This  agreement 
remained  unchanged  until  the  renewal  of  Mr.  Howe's  patent 
in  1860,  when  his  fee  was  reduced  from  five  dollars  to  one 
dollar,  and  that  of  the  Combination  from  fifteen  dollars  to 
seven.  That  is  to  say,  every  sewing-machine  honestly 
made  paid  Elias  Howe  one  dollar ;  and  every  sewing-machine 


HISTORY   OP   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  165 

made,  which  included  any  device  or  devices  the  patent  for 
which  is  held  by  any  other  member  of  the  Combination, 
paid  seven  dollars  to  the  Combination.  Of  this  seven  dol- 
lars, Mr.  Howe  received  his  one,  and  the  other  six  went 
into  the  fund  for  the  defence  of  the  patents  against  infringers. 
For  example,  take  the  Wilcox  and  Gibbs  machine,  the 
only  one,  as  far  as  we  know,  which  was  not  invented  by  a 
Yankee,  or  in  Yankee  land.  Twelve  years  ago,  Mr.  James 
E.  A.  Gibbs,  a  Virginia  farmer,  saw  in  the  "  Scientific  Ameri- 
can "  a  picture  of  a  sewing-machine.  Being  a  man  of  a 
decided  turn  for  mechanics,  he  examined  the  drawing  with 
great  attention ;  but,  as  it  exhibited  only  the  upper  part  of 
the  machine,  he  could  form  no  idea  of  the  contrivance  under- 
neath by  which  the  stitch  was  formed.  The  working  of  the 
apparatus  was,  however,  very  plain,  down  to  the  moment 
when  the  needle  perforates  the  cloth ;  and  he  fell  into  the 
habit  of  musing  upon  the  course  of  events  after  the  point  of 
the  needle  was  lost  to  view.  The  result  of  his  cogitations, 
aided  by  infinite  whittling,  was  the  ingenious  little  revolving 
hook  which  constitutes  the  peculiarity  of  the  Wilcox  and 
Gibbs  machine.  But  that  machine,  besides  employing  Mr. 
Gibbs'  invention,  uses  the  feeding  apparatus  of  Allen  B. 
Wilson,  and  the  eye-pointed  needle  of  Elias  Howe.  It  is 
therefore  tributary  to  the  Combination,  and  pays  it  seven 
dollars  for  each  machine.  A  similar  history  could  be  related 
of  the  "  Florence,"  the  "  Weed,"  the  "  Elliptic,"  the  "  Empire," 
and  others.  All  these  machines  are  worth  examination  by 
those  who  are  curious  in  mechanical  devices.  The  "  Florence," 
for  example  (so  called  because  it  is  made  in  Florence, 
Massachusetts),  has  a  beautiful  contrivance,  by  means  of 
which  the  operator  can  sew  backwards  as  well  as  forwards. 
The  shuttle  of  this  machine  is  so  constructed  as  to  make  its 
own  "  tension ";  or,  in  other  words,  the  shuttle  holds  the 
thread  as  tightly  or  as  loosely  as  the  seam  requires. 


166  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  business  of  making  and  selling  sewing-machines, 
which  was  not  fairly  started  before  1856,  has  attained  a  truly 
wonderful  development.  Twenty-seven  firms  or  companies 
have  been  engaged  in  it  at  one  time,  a  few  of  which  have 
lately  withdrawn,  leaving  about  twenty  still  in  the  business. 
One  of  these  has  twenty-four  stores  of  its  own  in  the  large 
cities  of  the  world,  besides  a  much  larger  number  of  local 
agents.  Another  boasts  that  there  are  thirty-nine  cities  on 
this  planet  where  its  machines  can  be  bought  at  all  times. 
We  can  ourselves  bear  witness,  that,  in  such  cities  as  Cin- 
cinnati, St.  Louis,  and  Chicago,  each  of  the  well-known 
makers  has  a  spacious  and  elegant  establishment,  with  all  the 
appurtenances  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  New  York. 
In  Australia,  one  of  our  New  York  companies,  at  least,  has 
an  establishment  of  its  own. 

Gentlemen  best  acquainted  with  the  business,  compute 
that  the  whole  number  of  sewing-machines  made  in  the 
United  States  up  to  the  close  of  the  year  1866  was  about 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand.  During  the  quarter  end- 
ing December  10,  1866,  the  number  of  machines  made  by 
licensed  companies,  as  reported  by  them  to  Elias  Howe,  was 
52,219  !  This  is  above  the  rate  of  two  hundred  thousand 
per  annum.  Mr.  Howe  was  of  opinion  that  about  half  as 
many  more  were  produced  by  unlicensed  makers,  including 
the  Yankees  who,  driven  from  the  United  States  by  the  Com- 
bination, have  set  up  their  factories  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Canada  line.  At  present  we  are  producing  the  astounding 
and  almost  incredible  number  of  two  thousand  sewing- 
machines  every  working-day,  at  an  average  cost  to  the  pur- 
chaser of  sixty  dollars  each.  The  world,  however,  is  a  very 
large  place,  and  America  still  supplies  it  with  most  of  its 
sewing-machines.  When  we  visit  single  establishments  in 
New  England,  which  employ  five  hundred  machines ;  when 


HISTORY   OP   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  167 

we  learn  that  the  shirt-makers  of  one  city,  Troy,  are  now  run- 
ning more  than  five  thousand  of  them ;  and  when  we  con- 
sider that  there  are  in  the  United  States  seven  millions  of 
families,  most  of  whom  mean  to  have  a  sewing-machine 
when  they  can  afford  it,  we  can  believe  that  even  so  many  as 
two  thousand  a  day  may  be  absorbed.  About  one  fifth  of 
all  the  machines  made  in  the  United  States  are  exported  to 
foreign  countries.  Wheeler  and  Wilson,  Grover  and  Baker, 
Singer  and  Company,  Wilcox  and  Gibbs,  the  Florence,  and 
others,  are  familiar  names  in  St.  Petersburg,  Paris,  London, 
Berlin,  Vienna,  Madrid,  Melbourne,  Mexico,  Kio  Janeiro, 
Havana,  Valparaiso,  Vancouver's  Island,  and  wherever  else 
in  the  world  many  stitches  are  taken.  Foreigners  can  no 
more  make  a  Yankee  sewing-machine  than  they  can  make  a 
Yankee  clock.  They  have  not  the  machinery  —  as  curious 
as  the  machine  itself — by  which  each  part  of  the  apparatus 
is  made  at  the  minimum  of  expense,  and  with  perfect  cer- 
tainty of  excellence.  To  found  a  sewing-machine  manufac- 
tory in  Europe,  which  could  compete  with  those  of  America, 
would  involve  an  expenditure  of  two  millions  of  dollars,  and 
the  expatriation  of  several  of  our  American  foremen.  It  is 
only  upon  a  great  scale  that  the  machines  can  be  made  well 
or  profitably. 

By  means  of  the  various  improvements  and  attachments, 
the  sewing-machine  now  performs  nearly  all  that  the  needle 
ever  did.  It  seams,  hems,  tucks,  binds,  stitches,  quilts, 
gathers,  fells,  braids,  embroiders,  and  makes  button-holes. 
It  is  used  in  the  manufacture  of  every  garment  worn  by  man, 
woman,  or  child.  Firemen's  caps,  the  engine-hose  which 
firemen  use,  sole-leather  trunks,  harness,  carriage  curtains 
and  linings,  buffalo-robes,  horse-blankets,  horse-collars,  pow- 
der-flasks, mail-bags,  sails,  awnings,  whips,  saddles,  cor- 
sets, hats,  caps,  valises,  pocket-books,  trusses,  suspenders, 

11 


1(58  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTEKPRISE. 

are  among  the  articles  made  by  its   assistance;   but  it  is 
employed,     quite    as     usefully,    in     making    kid    gloves, 
parasols,   and  the   most  delicate   articles  of  ladies'  attire. 
Some   of  our    readers,   perhaps,    witnessed   the   show,    in 
New  York,  of  the  shoes,  gaiters,  and  ladies'  boots  made  for 
the  Paris   Exhibition.     They  were  of  all  degrees  of  deli- 
cacy, from  the  stout  Balmoral  to  the  bpot  of  kid,  satin,  or 
velvet;    and   every  kind  of  stitch  had  been  employed   in 
their  manufacture.     Some  of  the  stitches  were  so  fine  that 
they  could  not  be  distinctly  seen  without  a  magnifying-glass, 
and  some  were  as  coarse  and  strong  as  those  of  men's  boots. 
The  special  wonder  of  this  display  was  that  every  stitch  in 
every  one  of  those  beautiful    shoes  was  executed  by  the 
machine.    Mr.  E.  C.  Burt,  who  made  this  splendid  contri- 
bution to  the  Exhibition,  assured  us,  that  all  this  variety  of 
elegant  and  durable  work  was   performed  on  the  sewing- 
machine.    Upon  ordinary  boots  and  shoes,  the  machine  has 
long  been  employed ;  but  it  is  only  recently  that  any  one 
has  attempted  to  apply  it  to  the  manufacture  of  those  dainty 
things  which  ladies  wear  upon  their  feet  when  they  go  forth 
armed,  cap-a-pie,  for  conquest.     A  similar  change   has  oc- 
curred in  other  branches  of  manufacture.     As  operators  have 
increased  in  skill,  and  as  the  special  capabilities  of  the  differ- 
ent machines  have  been  better  understood,  finer  kinds  of 
work  have  been  done  upon  them  than  used  to  be  thought 
possible.       Some  young  ladies  have  developed  a  kind  of 
genius  for  the  sewing-machine.     The  apparatus  has    fasci- 
nated them ;  they  execute  marvels  upon  it,  as  Gottschalk  did 
upon  the  piano.     One  of  the  most  recent  applications  of  the 
machine  is  to  the  sewing  of  straw  hats  and  bonnets.     A  Yan- 
kee, in  Connecticut,  has  invented  attachments  by  which  the 
finest  braids  are  sewn  into  bonnets  of  any  form. 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  estimate  the  value,  in  money, 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  169 

of  the  sewing-machine  to  the  people  of  the  United  States. 
Professor  Renwick,  who  has  made  the  machine  a  particular 
study,  expressed  the  opinion,  nine  years  ago,  on  oath,  that 
the  saving  in  labor  then  amounted  to  nineteen  millions  of 
dollars  per  annum.  Messrs.  Wheeler  and  Wilson  have  pub- 
lished an  estimate,  which  indicates  that  the  total  value  of  the 
labor  performed  by  the  sewing-machine,  in  1863,  was 'three 
hundred  and  forty-two  millions  of  dollars.  A  good  hand- 
sewer  averages  thirty-five  stitches  per  minute ;  the  fastest 
machines  on  some  kinds  of  work,  perform  three  thousand  a 
minute.  There  are  in  a  good  shirt  20,620  stitches  ;  what  a 
saving  to  do  them  at  a  machine  speed  !  We  glean  from  the 
volumes  of  testimony  before  us  a  few  similar  facts.  The 
stitching  of  a  man's  hat  by  hand  requires  fifteen  minutes ; 
by  machine,  one  minute.  One  girl  can  do  the  sewing  by 
machine  of  as  many  boys'  caps  as  ten  men  can  do  by  hand. 
In  fine  clothing  for  men,  the  saving  is,  of  course,  not  so 
great.  Messrs.  Brooks  Brothers,  of  New  York,  say  that  the 
making  of  a  first-rate  overcoat  by  hand  requires  six  days' 
steady  sewing ;  by  machine,  three  days.  In  the  general 
work  of  a  tailor,  the  machine  saves  a  journeyman  about  four 
hours  in  twelvet  Carriage  trimmers  testify  that  one  machine 
and  three  hands  are  equivalent  to  eleven  hands.  In  the  truss 
and  bandage  business,  which  is  one  of  very  great  extent  and 
importance,  one  machine  is  equal  to  ten  women.  In  the 
manufacture  of  bags  for  flour,  salt,  and  meal,  of  which  the 
city  of  New  York  produces  two  millions  of  dollars'  worth 
per  annum,  a  machine  does  the  work  of  nine  girls.  In  mere 
hemming,  on  a  machine  fitted  expressly  for  the  purpose,  one 
machine  does  the  work  of  fifty  girls. 

Yet  where  is  the  woman  who  can  say  that  her  sewing  is 
less  a  tax  upon  her  time  and  strength  than  it  was  before  the 
sewing -machine  came  in?  But  this  is  not  the  machine's 


170  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

fault ;  it  is  the  fault  of  human  nature.  As  soon  as  lovely 
woman  discovers  that  she  can  set  ten  stitches  in  the  time  that 
one  used  to  require,  a  fury  seizes  her  to  put  ten  times  as 
many  stitches  in  every  garment  as  she  formerly  did.  Tailors 
and  seamstresses,  not  content  with  sewing  the  seams  of  gar- 
ments, must  needs  cover  them  with  figures  executed  by 
"  stitching."  And  thus  it  is  that  man  never  is,  but  always 
to  be,  blest.  If  with  one  part  of  his  brain  he  invents  a  labor- 
saving  apparatus,  the  other  lobes  immediately  create  as 
much  new  labor  as  the  apparatus  saves.  But  it  is  this  chase 
of  Desire,  after  Ability,  which  keeps  the  world  moving, 
and  tends  always  to  equalize  the  lot  of  men.  The  sewing- 
machine  is  one  of  the  means  by  which  the  industrious  laborer 
is  as  well  clad  as  any  millionnaire  need  be,  and  by  which 
working  girls  are  enabled  safely  to  gratify  their  woman's 
instinct  of  decoration. 

Elias  Howe  could  justly  claim  that  it  was  his  invention 
which  enabled  the  United  States  to  put  and  keep  a  million 
men  in  the  field  during  the  war.  Those  countless  garments, 
tents,  haversacks,  cartridge-boxes,  shoes,  blankets,  sails, — 
how  could  they  have  been  produced  without  the  sewing- 
machine  ?  One  day  during  the  war,  at  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  an  order  from  the  War  Department  reached  New 
York,  by  telegraph,  for  fifty  thousand  sand-bags,  such  as  are 
used  in  field-works.  By  two  o'clock  the  next  afternoon,  the 
bags  had  been  made,  packed,  shipped,  and  started  south- 
ward. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  sewing-machine,  it  was  not  sup- 
posed that  it  would  ever  come  into  general  use  in  families. 
The  great  cost  of  the  machine,  and  the  supposed  difficulty 
of  learning  to  use  it,  were  considered  fatal  obstacles  to  its 
general  introduction  into  households.  The  price  has  now 
been  reduced  to  fifty-five  dollars  for  the  cheapest  good 


HISTORY   OP   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  171 

machines,  and  it  has  been  found  that  an  intelligent  woman 
can  learn  to  sew  with  it  in  an  hour.  An  average  seamstress 
becomes  proficient  in  the  use  of  it  in  a  month.  For  some 
time  past,  therefore,  the  great  object  of  the  celebrated 
makers  is  to  produce  the  best  family  machine.  This  is  the 
point  of  rivalry  among  them. 

A  lady  who  leaves  her  home,  after  a  breakfast  consulta- 
tion with  her  husband,  and  goes  forth  to  select  a  family  sew- 
ing-machine, has  undertaken  an  expedition  which  promises 
nothing  but  pleasure.  The  sewing-machine  establishments 
are  numerous  and  splendid.  She  pauses  before  a  magnifi- 
cent marble  store,  with  windows  formed  of  single  panes  of 
plate-glass,  in  one  of  which  are  sewing-machines,  brilliant 
with  polished  steel  and  silver  plate  and  rosewood,  and  in 
the  others  are  beautiful  garments  covered  with  miraculous 
stitching,  executed  by  those  pretty  parlor  ornaments. 
Yielding  to  these  allurements,  she  enters  a  grand  saloon, 
a  hundred  feet  long,  extending  back  to  another  street,  and 
covered  with  Wilton  carpet,  of  better  quality,  probably, 
than  that  which  she  treads  in  her  own  parlor.  Perhaps 
the  walls  and  ceilings  are  frescoed ;  and,  if  they  are  not,  they 
are  richly  papered  and  painted.  Sewing-machines,  in  long- 
rows,  not  too  close  together  for  convenient  moving  about, 
agreeably  dot  the  whole  surface  of  the  apartment,  as  far 
as  the  eye  can  penetrate  the  gloom  of  the  distance.  Along 
the  wall,  at  the  farther  end  of  the  room,  she  will  dis- 
cover, by  and  by,  a  row  of  enclosed  desks,  like  those  of 
a  bank,  each  desk  being  a  small  apartment,  as  elegant 
and  commodious  as  taste  and  money  can  make  it.  These 
are  for  the  dignitaries  of  the  Company,  the  president,  the 
cashier,  the  general  agent,  the  advertising  clerk.  Here 
and  there  a  young  lady  may  be  seen  "  operating  "  one  of 
the  machines,  in  a  graceful  attitude,  and  with  such  perfect 


172  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ease  as  to  dispel  the  fears  of  a  purchaser  most  distrustful 
of  her  powers.  The  rapid  and  yet  not  noisy  click  of  the 
machines  is  cheering,  and  seems  the  appropriate  music  of 
the  place.  And  this  grand  hall  is  only  one  of  many  apart- 
ments. The  basement,  and  the  cellar  below  the  basement, 
each  as  large  as  the  store,  are  occupied  as  depositories, 
repairing  shops,  packing  rooms ;  while  in  the  story  above 
the  store  may  be  found  superb  rooms,  wherein  ladies  who 
have  bought  a  machine  receive  instruction  in  the  art  of  using 
it,  attending  daily,  if  they  choose,  until  they  have  become 
proficients  in  hemming,  sewing,  braiding,  making  button- 
holes, and  in  all  the  other  varieties  of  needle-work. 

The  clerk  who  advances  to  wait  upon  the  lady  soon  learns 
her  errand,  and  discovers  her  ignorance.  Indeed,  she 
frankly  avows  her  ignorance.  She  has  come  out,  she  art- 
lessly says,  in  pursuit  of  knowledge.  She  desires  to  ascer- 
tain which  is  the  best  sewing-machine  in  existence  for  family 
use.  Long  practice  has  taught  an  intelligent  and  ambitious 
young  man  how  to  deal  with  cases  of  this  kind.  He  does, 
in  his  inmost  soul,  believe  that  the  sewing-machines  made 
by  the  company  he  serves  are  the  very  best  in  the  world, 
especially  for  family  use.  But  he  feels  the  delicacy  of  his 
situation.  "Of  course,  madam,  we  are  interested  parties, 
and  it  would  be  no  more  than  natural  that  we  should  repre- 
sent our  machines  to  be  the  best  in  the  market.  But  it  is 
no  part  of  the  policy  of  our  company  to  disparage  those 
made  by  our  neighbors.  We  are  on  friendly  terms  with 
them,  and  we  are  ready  to  admit  that  some  of  them  do  make 
machines  which,  for  some  purposes,  are  excellent.  But 
when  it  comes  to  machines  for  family  use,  which  is  our  spe- 
cialty, why  then,  madam,  we  cannot  hesitate.  Upon  that 
point  there  can  be  but  one  opinion.  Nevertheless,  we  do  not 
ask  ladies  to  believe  what  we  say ;  we  show  them  what  our 


H1STOKY   OF   THE    SEWING-MACHINE.  173 

machine  does,  and  let  it  speak  for  itself."  Conciliated  by 
such  modesty  and  candor,  the  lady  watches  with  pleasure 
and  admiration  while  one  dexterous  young  lady  runs  up  a 
seam,  and  another  hems  a  sheet,  and  another  does  a  little 
quilting,  and  another  makes  a  button-hole  in  half  a  minute. 
The  lady  herself  takes  a  seat  at  a  machine,  and  is  astonished 
to  find  herself  sewing  at  a  rattling  pace,  "  without  any  pre- 
vious instruction." 

She  is  convinced.  She  is  perfectly  satisfied.  She  sym- 
pathizes with  the  tender  compassion  expressed  by  the  clerk 
for  the  great  number  of  ladies  who  have  been  deluded  into 
buying  other  machines,  which,  after  distracting  a  household 
for  many  months,  are  now  discarded  and  consigned  to  the 
garret.  "  You  see,  madam,  advertising  can  force  a  machine 
on  the  market ;  but,  in  the  long  run,  real  merit  overcomes 
all  opposition."  She  assents  with  her  whole  soul  to  his  prop- 
osition. It  accords  with  what  she  has  observed  of  human 
life.  She  has  even  made  the  remark  herself. 

The  impulse  is  strong  within  her  to  buy  one  of  these  peer- 
less machines  on  the  spot,  and  she  has  not  the  slightest 
doubt  that  she  shall  do  so  in  the  course  of  the  day.  But  it 
was  agreed  between  her  husband  and  herself,  that  she  should 
examine  all  before  '  purchasing ;  and  so,  in  obedience  to  a 
stern  sense  of  duty,  she  resolves  to  go  through  the  form  — 
the  mere  form — of  looking  at  other  machines.  She  feels 
that  she  must  be  able  to  say  that  she  has  fulfilled  her  com- 
pact. 

In  another  spacious  and  elegant  saloon,  another  accom- 
plished clerk  claims  for  another  machine  precisely  the  same 
excellences,  which  other  young  ladies  proceed  to  exhibit. 
If  she  ventures  timidly  to  intimate  that  she  has  been  looking 
at  a  machine  elsewhere,  the  accomplished  clerk  knows  well 
how  to  proceed.  He  discourses  at  large  upon  the  merits  of  all 


174  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTEKPKISE. 

the  machines.  He  exhibits  all  the  varieties  of  needles  employed 
in  them,  and  expatiates  upon  the  very  complicated  machinery 
uesd  to  propel  those  needles.  "Your  own  common-sense 
must  tell  you,  madam,  that  the  simpler  a  piece  of  mechanism 
is,  the  less  liable  it  is  to  get  out  of  order,  and  the  more  easily 
it  is  worked  by  an  inexperienced  person.  Now,  madam,  our 
machine  contains  eleven  pieces  less  than  any  other  in  the 
market,  and  your  own  common-sense  must  tell  you  that 
every  piece  added  to  a  machine  makes  it  more  complicated, 
and  more  easily  disarranged.  Don't  misunderstand  me, 
madam ;  I  do  not  say  that  the  machine  you  examined  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street  was  not  a  very  good  one,  in  its  day ; 
but  some  people,  you  know,  when  they  have  a  pretty  good 
thing,  are  satisfied,  and  don't  keep  up  with  the  times. 
However,  we  never  speak  ill  of  our  neighbors.  We  simply 
show  what  our  machine  is,  and  what  it  can  do.  Your  own 
common-sense  must  decide." 

And  so  he  goes  on,  until  the  lady  shudders  to  think  what 
a  narrow  escape  she  has  had  from  falling  a  victim  to  the 
wiles  of  the  brilliant  young  man  who  first  entertained  her. 
By  the  time  she  has  gone  the  rounds  of  the  ten  or  twelve 
sewing-machine  establishments  on  Broadway,  between  Canal 
Street  and  Union  Square,  she  is  in  a  state  of  mind  to  buy  a 
wheelbarrow,  in  order  to  end  the  agonizing  struggle. 

In  truth,  ladies,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  absolutely 
and  universally  best  sewing-machine.  Each  has  its  special 
merits,  which  make  it  the  best  for  some  purposes.  No 
machine  exists  which  will  sew  equally  well  the  sole-leather 
for  a  trunk  and  the  cambric  of  a  chemisette.  The  machine 
that  is  best  for  a  family  of  young  children  may  not  be 
best  for  a  family  of  grown  daughters,  who  go  to  balls, 
and  want  new  cloaks  every  winter.  The  machine  that  is 
best  for  a  farmer's  wife  may  not  be  the  best  for  a  fine  lady 


HISTORY   OF   THE    SEWING— MACHINE.  175 

of  the  city ;  but  though  not  the  best,  it  is  so  good  that  she 
could  hardly  be  made  to  believe  there  could  be  a  better. 
We  find,  accordingly,  that  every  lady  believes  firmly  in 
the  sewing-machine  which  she  is  so  fortunate  as  to  pos- 
sess. 

It  is  but  just  to  add,  that  all  the  well-known  makers  have 
seized  the  truth,  that  the  only  way  in  which  a  business .  per- 
manently great  can  be  created,  is  by  serving  the  public  with 
systematic  and  scrupulous  fidelity.  Nothing  can  exceed  the 
care  taken  by  them  all,  that  no  machine  shall  leave  the  factory 
which  shall  not  be,  as  long  as  it  lasts,  an  advertisement  for 
the  company  whose  name  it  bears. 


INVENTION  OF  CIRCULATING  LIBRARIES. 


I  HAVE  sometimes  thought  that  a  proper  history  of 
the  last  century  could  be  written  without  so  much  as 
mentioning  the  name  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte ;  for  nothing 
is  really  worth  recording  as  final  history,  except  what 
promotes  the  permanent  welfare  of  man.  Bonaparte 
founded  nothing,  established  nothing,  suggested  nothing, 
which  our  race  will  not  gladly  dispense  with,  when  we  learn 
how  to  make  a  better  use  of  our  energies  than  in  destroying 
one  another.  He  was  a  tempest.  He  did  not  help  France 
out  of  her  difficulties,  nor  make  the  future  easier  for  her. 
When  he  had  passed  away,  the  beautiful  country  which  he 
had  dazzled  and  drained  fell  helpless  into  the  hands  of  a 
poor  old  man  and  a  few  old  priests.  To  this  day,  there  is 
no  hope  for  France,  except  in  forgetting  Bonaparte,  and 
extirpating  nearly  all  that  he  left  behind  him. 

But  if  the  historian  could  pass  by  without  mention  that 
incarnate  tornado,  I  am  sure  that  no  enlightening,  complete 
history  of  the  last  two  centuries  could  be  written  without 
relating  the  origin  of  circulating  libraries,  humble  as  that 
origin  was,  and  only  preserved  from  oblivion  in  the  brief 
memoirs  of  their  inventor.  Next  to  the  district  schools,  a 
good,  self-sustaining  circulating  library  is  perhaps  the  most 
beneficial  institution  which  can  exist  in  a  town.  It  is  useful 
anywhere ;  but  in  secluded  country  places,  a  good  public 
library  makes  the  difference,  in  the  long  run,  between  mental 


178  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

life  and  mental  darkness ;  between  the  gloom  of  ignorance 
and  bigotry,  and  the  cheerful  light  shed  abroad  by  knowledge 
and  public  spirit. 

This  invaluable  institution  we  owe  to  the  benevolence, 
ingenuity,  and  practical  wisdom  of  that  great  benefactor  of 
his  species,  Benjamin  Franklin.  In  that  part  of  his  auto- 
biography where  he  relates  his  adventures  in  London  as  a 
journeyman  printer,  from  his  nineteenth  to  his  twenty-first 
year,  the  following  passage  occurs :  — 

"  While  I  lodged  in  Little  Britain,  I  made  an  acquaintance  with 
one  Wilcox,  a  bookseller,  whose  shop  was  next  door.  He  had  an 
immense  collection  of  second-hand  books.  Circulating  libraries 
were  not  then  in  use ;  but  we  agreed  that,  on  certain  reasonable 
terms,  which  I  have  now  forgotten,  I  might  take,  read,  and  return 
any  of  his  books.  This  I  esteemed  a  great  advantage,  and  I  made 
as  much  use  of  it  as  I  could." 

In  this  passage  we  have,  I  think,  the  germ  of  the  circulat- 
ing library. 

Six  years  passed.  Franklin  had  returned  to  Philadelphia, 
where  he  had  set  up  in  business  as  a  printer,  and  established 
his  celebrated  club,  called  the  "Junto."  At  first  this  club  met 
in  an  ale-house ;  but,  after  a  while,  one  of  the  members  lent 
them  a  room,  which  he  set  apart  for  their  exclusive  use.  In 
their  debates  and  conversations,  the  members  often  referred 
to  their  books,  which,  however,  being  at  home,  could  not  be 
produced  at  the  opportune  moment.  One  evening,  Franklin 
proposed  that  they  should  all  bring  their  little  stock  of  books 
to  this  apartment,  where  they  would  be  at  the  service  of  the 
members  at  all  times,  and  each  would  have  the  advantage  of 
a  considerable  library.  The  members  consenting,  the  books 
were  brought,  and  arranged  at  one  end  of  the  room  upon 
shelves.  The  collection  was  not  large,  for  the  members  were 


INVENTION   OF   CIRCULATING   LIBK ARIES.  179 

mostly  young  men,  either  journeymen,  or  just  beginning 
business,  and  books  at  that  time —  1731  —  were  ponderous, 
scarce,  and  high-priced. 

The  plan  did  not  answer  as  well  as  Franklin  hoped. 
Some  of  the  books  were  carelessly  used  and  injured.  The 
owners  were  dissatisfied,  and,  at  the  end  of  a  year,  each 
member  took  home  his  books,  and  so  the  collection  was 
broken  up. 

Franklin,  who  was  all  his  life  a  student,  missed  them  from 
the  club-room ;  and  he  now  conceived  the  project  of  founding 
a  permanent  library  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole  town,  and 
one  from  which  books  could  be  taken  to  the  homes  of  the 
subscribers.  Philadelphia,  at  that  time,  contained  about  ten 
thousand  inhabitants,  and  among  them  there  were  few  who 
had  much  taste  for  reading.  The  project,  therefore,  was  not 
easy  of  accomplishment.  It  demanded  all  of  Franklin's  tact, 
perseverance,  and  knowledge  of  mankind.  • 

First,  he  tells  us,  he  drew  a  sketch  of  the  plan  and  rules, 
and  requested  a  conveyancer,  a  member  of  the  club,  to  put 
them  in  legal  form  to  be  subscribed,  each  signer  engaging  to 
pay  forty  shillings  down  for  the  first  purchase  of  books,  and 
ten  shillings  every  year  for  the  increase  of  the  library.  It 
was  with  very  great  difficulty,  and  after  many  a  weary  tramp 
about  the  town,  and  many  an  hour's  persuasive  talk,  that  he 
obtained  fifty  subscribers.  He  lets  us  in  to  one  of  the  secrets 
of  his  success  in  an  amusing  passage,  which  the  reader  would 
do  well  to  remember  the  next  time  he  has  any  public  object 
to  promote. 

"  The  objections  and  reluctances  I  met  with,  in  soliciting 
the  subscriptions,  made  me  soon  feel  the  impropriety  of 
presenting  one's  self  as  the  proposer  of  any  useful  project 
that  might  be  supposed  to  raise  one's  reputation  in  the 
smallest  degree  above  that  of  one's  neighbors,  when  one  has 


180  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

need  of  their  assistance  to  accomplish  that  project.  I  there- 
fore put  myself  as  much  as  I  could  out  of  sight,  and  stated 
it  as  a  scheme  of  a  number  of  friends,  who  had  requested 
me  to  go  about  and  propose  it  to  such  as  they  thought  lovers 
of  reading.  In  this  way  my  affair  went  on  more  smoothly, 
and  I  ever  after  practised  it  on  such  occasions ;  and,  from 
my  frequent  successes,  can  heartily  recommend  it.  The 
present  little  sacrifice  of  your  vanity  will  afterwards  be 
amply  repaid.  If  it  remains  a  while  uncertain  to  whom  the 
merit  belongs,  some  one  more  vain  than  yourself  may  be 
encouraged  to  claim  it,  and  then  even  envy  will  be  disposed 
to  do  you  justice,  by  plucking  those  assumed  feathers,  and 
restoring  them  to  their  right  owner." 

Notwithstanding  his  good  management,  more  than  a  year 
elapsed  before  the  money  was  collected,  and  the  first  parcel 
of  books  sent  for.  When  the  books  arrived,  —  the  solid 
octavos  and  huge  folios  of  the  olden  time,  —  one  of  the  sub- 
scribers was  appointed  to  take  care  of  them,  and  to  be  in 
attendance  at  a  certain  hour,  once  a  week,  to  give  them  out. 
The  library  was  highly  successful  from  the  start.  Donations 
of  books  were  frequently  made.  Governor  Penn  sent  over 
from  England  several  valuable  works.  Libraries  on  the 
same  plan  were  soon  formed  in  other  places,  to  the  manifest 
advantage  of  the  people. 

"Reading,"  says  Franklin,  "became  fashionable;  and  our 
people,  having  no  public  amusements  to  divert  their  atten- 
tion from  study,  became  better  acquainted  with  books  ;  and, 
in  a  few  years,  were  observed  by  strangers  to  be  better 
instructed  and  more  intelligent  than  people  of  the  same  rank 
generally  are  in  other  countries." 

This  library  continued  to  flourish  as  long  as  Franklin 
lived ;  and  during  the  very  last  year  of  his  life,  the  large 
brick  building  was  erected  for  it  near  the  State  House,  which 


INTENTION   OF    CIFCHLATING   LIBRARIES.  181 

still  stands.  The  library  then  contained  six  thousand  vol- 
umes. It  now  numbers  nearly  one  hundred  thousand,  and  a 
fund  is  forming  for  the  erection  of  an  edifice  still  more 
extensive,  elegant,  and  commodious.  The  great  utility  of 
the  library,  however,  was  in  demonstrating  the  fact,  that  such 
an  institution  as  a  self-sustaining  circulating  library  could 
exist.  A  few  years  after,  the  Society  Library  of  New  York, 
which  is  still  flourishing,  was  established  on  precisely  the 
same  principle ;  and  there  is  now  scarcely  a  large  town  in 
the  civilized  world  which  does  not  contain  one. 

The  beauty  of  the  principle  is,  that  it  works  just  as  well 
in  a  village  library  of  five  hundred  volumes,  as  it  does  in 
such  great  establishments  as  the  public  libraries  of  New 
York  and  Boston.  There  is  no  need  to  wait  for  some  rich 
man  to  give  a  large  sum  of  money,  or  for  a  town  to  vote  an 
annual  appropriation.  Hold  a  meeting;  form  a  society; 
invite  gifts  of  books ;  invite  subscriptions  of  money ;  elect 
a  librarian ;  open  the  library ;  and  permit  all  to  share  its 
benefits  for  a  small  annual  charge,  — two  dollars,  three  dol- 
lars, five  dollars,  as  may  be  thought  best.  By  a  good  course 
of  lectures,  a  few  hundred  dollars  can  be  raised  every  winter, 
with  which  the  library  can  be  enriched  with  some  glorious 
boxes  of  books  all  at  once.  In  a  few  years,  a  town  will  be 
surprised  to  find  itself  able  to  erect  a  building  for  the  library 
and  reading-room,  and  to  employ  one  of  its  intelligent  young 
ladies  as  a  permanent  librarian. 


SOME  OF  THE  WONDERS  OF  PITTSBUEG. 


THERE  are  three  cities,  readily  accessible  to  the  tourist, 
which  are  peculiar,  —  Quebec,  New  Orleans,  and  Pittsburg; 
and  of  these,  Pittsburg  is  the  most  interesting  by  far.  In 
other  towns  the  traveller  can  make  up  his  list  of  lions,  do 
them  in  a  few  hours,  and  go  away  satisfied ;  but  here  all  is 
curious  or  wonderful,  —  site,  environs,  history,  geology, 
business,  aspect,  atmosphere,  customs,  everything.  Pitts- 
burg is  a  place  to  read  up  for,  to  unpack  your  trunk  and 
settle  down  at,  to  make  excursions  from,  and  to  study  as 
you  would  study  a  group  of  sciences.  To  know  Pittsburg 
thoroughly,  is  a  liberal  education  in  "the  kind  of  cul- 
ture demanded  by  modern  times." 

On  that  low  point  of  land,  fringed  now  with  steamboats 
and  covered  with  grimy  houses,  scarcely  visible  in  the  No- 
vember fog  and  smoke,  modern  history  began.  It  began  on 
an  April  day,  one  hundred  and  seventeen  years  ago,  with  the 
first  hostile  act  of  the  long  war  which  secured  North  America 
to  our  race,  and  gave  final  preeminence  in  Europe  to  the 
Protestant  powers.  Bismarck's  recent  exploits  do  but  con- 
tinue the  work  begun  in  1754,  when  a  French  captain  seized 
that  point  of  land,  and  built  Fort  Duquesne  upon  it.  From 
the  windows  of  the  Monougahela  House,  which  stands  near 
the  site  of  the  old  fort,  and  within  easy  reach  of  the  three 
rivers,  the  whole  geography  of  the  country  can  be  spelled 

out  on  the  sides  of  the  steamboats.     Here  begins  the  Great 

12 


184  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

West.  We  have  reached  the  United  States.  Or,  if  it  is 
political  economy  that  you  would  know,  behold  it  in  opera- 
tion 1  Here  it  is,  complete,  illustrated,  with  errata  in  the 
form  of  closed  factories  and  workmen  on  the  strike.  What- 
ever protection  can  do  to  force  the  growth  of  premature 
enterprises  has  here  been  done,  undone,  and  done  again; 
and  here,  too,  may  be  seen  the  legitimate  triumphs  of  skill, 
fortitude,  and  patience,  which  the  vagaries  of  legislation  do 
not  destroy,  nor  the  alteration  of  a  decimal  fraction  at  a  cus- 
tom-house impair.  Brave  and  steadfast  men  have  battled 
nobly  here  with  the  substances  that  offer  the  greatest  resist- 
ance to  our  control,  and  which  serve  us  best  when  subju- 
gated ;  and  in  the  hills  and  valleys  round  about,  nature  has 
stored  those  substances  away  with  unequalled  profusion. 
Besides  placing  a  thick  layer  of  excellent  bituminous  coal 
half-way  up  those  winding  heights ;  besides  accumulating 
within  them  exhaustless  supplies  of  iron;  besides  sinking 
under  them  unfathomable  wells  of  oil  and  salt  water,  nature 
has  coiled  about  their  bases  a  system  of  navigable  streams, 
all  of  which  form  themselves  into  two  rivers,  —  the  Alle- 
ghany  and  Monongahela,  —  and,  at  Pittsburg,  unite  to  form 
the  Ohio,  and  give  the  city  access  to  every  port  on  earth. 
It  is  chiefly  at  Pittsburg  that  the  products  of  the  Pennsylva- 
nia hills  and  mountains  are  converted  into  wealth,  and  dis- 
tributed over  the  world.  The  wonder  is,  not  that  Pittsburg 
is  an  assemblage  of  flourishing  towns  of  250,000  inhabitants, 
but  that,  placed  at  such  a  commanding  point,  it  is  not  the 
most  flourishing  and  the  most  populous  city  in  America. 

This  it  might  have  been,  perhaps,  if  the  site  had  been  ten 
level  square  miles,  instead  of  two,  and  those  two  surrounded 
by  steep  hills,  four  hundred  feet  high,  and  by  rivers  a  third 
of  a  mile  wide.  It  is  curiously  hemmed  in,  —  that  small 
triangle  of  low  land  upon  which  the  city  was  originally  built. 


SOME    OF   THE    WONDEKS    OF    PITTSBURG.  185 

A  stranger,  walking  about  the  streets  on  a  summer  afternoon, 
is  haunted  by  the  idea  that  a  terrific  thunder-storm  is  hang- 
ing over  the  place.  Every  street  appears  to  end  in  a  huge 
black  cloud,  and  there  is  everywhere  the  ominous  darkness 
that  creeps  over  the  scene  when  a  storm  is  approaching. 
When  the  traveller  has  satisfied  himself  that  the  black  clouds 
are  only  the  smoke-covered  hills  that  rise  from  each  of  the 
three  rivers,  still  he  catches  himself  occasionally  quickening 
his  steps,  so  as  to  get  back  to  his  umbrella  before  the  storm 
bursts.  During  our  first  stroll  about  the  town,  some  years 
ago,  we  remained  under  this  delusion  for  half  an  hour  ;  and 
only  recovered  from  it  after  observing  that  the  old  ladies 
who  sat  knitting  about  the  markets  never  stirred  to  get  their 
small  stock  of  small  wares  under  cover. 

Pittsburg  announces  its  peculiar  character  from  afar  off. 
Those  who  approach  it  in  the  night  see  before  them,  first  of 
all,  a  black  hill,  in  the  side  of  which  are  round  flaming  fires 
in  a  row,  like  so  many  fiery  eyes.  Then  other  black  hills 
loom  dimly  up,  with  other  rows  of  fires  half-way  up  their 
sides  ;  and  there  are  similar  fiery  dots  in  the  gloom  as  far  as 
the  eye  can  reach.  This  is  wonderfully  picturesque,  and 
excites  the  curiosity  of  the  traveller  to  the  highest  point. 
He  thinks  that  Pittsburg  must  be  at  work  behind  those  fires, 
naked  to  the  waist,  with  hairy  chest  and  brawny  arms,  doing 
tremendous  things  with  molten  iron,  or  forging  huge  masses 
white-hot,  amid  showers  of  sparks.  No  such  thing.  These 
rows  of  fires,  of  which  scores  can  be  counted  from  a  favora- 
ble point,  are  merely  the  chimneys  of  coke-ovens,  quietly 
doing  their  duty  during  the  night,  unattended.  That  duty 
is  to  convert  the  waste  coal-dust  at  the  mouths  of  the  mines, 
where  it  has  been  accumulating  fora  century,  into  serviceable 
coke.  These  are  almost  the  only  fires  about  Pittsburg  that 
are  always  burning,  night  and  day,  Sundays  and  holidays. 


186  TRIUMPHS    OP   ENTERPRISE. 

The  approach  to  the  city  by  day  is  even  more  remarkable. 
The  railroad  from  Cincinnati,  after  crossing  the  Ohio  sev- 
eral miles  below  Pittsburg,  has  an  arduous  work  to  perform. 
Its  general  design  is  to  follow  the  course  of  the  river ;  but 
as  the  river  is  always  bending  into  the  form  of  the  letter  S, 
and  carrying  the  hills  with  it,  the  railroad  is  continually  div- 
ing under  the  hills  to  make  short  cuts.  This  is  unfavorable 
to  the  improvement  of  the  traveller's  mind ;  for  the  alterna- 
tions from  daylight  to  darkness  are  so  frequent  and  sudden, 
that  he  is  apt,  at  length,  to  lay  aside  his  book  altogether,  and 
give  himself  up  to  the  contemplation  of  the  November  drizzle. 
This  was  our  employment  when  the  cars  stopped  opposite  the 
point  for  which  nine  nations  have  contended,  —  France,  Eng- 
land, the  United  States,  and  the  "  Six  Nations."  Was  there 
ever  such  a  dismal  lookout  anywhere  else  in  this  world  ?  Those 
hills,  once  so  beautifully  rounded,  and  in  such  harmony  with 
the  scene,  have  been  cut  down,  sliced  off,  pierced,  slanted, 
zigzagged,  built  upon,  built  under,  until  almost  every  trace 
of  their  former  outline  has  been  obliterated,  without  receiv- 
ing from  man's  hand  any  atoning  beauty.  The  town  lies  low, 
as  at  the  bottom  of  an  excavation,  just  visible  through  the 
mingled  smoke  and  mist,  and  every  object  in  it  is  black. 
Smoke,  smoke,  smoke,  —  everywhere  smoke  !  Smoke,  with 
the  noise  of  the  steam-hammer,  and  the  spouting  flame  of 
tall  chimneys,  —  that  is  all  we  perceive  of  Pittsburg  from  the 
side  of  the  hill  opposite  the  site  of  Fort  Duquesne.  How 
different  the  scene  which  the  youthful  Washington  saw  here , 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago,  when  not  a  human  dwelling 
was  near,  and  scarcely  a  white  man  lived  beyond  the  Alle- 
ghanies !  With  his  soldier's  eye  he  marked  the  rushing 
Alleghany,  the  tranquil  Monongahela,  the  winding  Ohio,  and 
the  hills  through  which  they  flowed,  only  to  report  that  the 
point  of  land  at  the  intersection  was  the  very  place,  of  all 


SOME   OF   THE    WONDERS   OF   PITTSBURG.  187 

others,  for  a  fort.  We  have  found  better  uses  for  it  since. 
But  these  better  uses  have  played  havoc  with  the  striking 
beauties  of  the  landscape. 

The  two  tributary  rivers  are  spanned  by  many  bridges, 
light  but  strong,  some  of  which  are  of  great  elegance.  Over 
one  of  them  the  train  crosses  the  Monongahela,  alive  with 
black  barges  and  puffing  tug-boats,  and  enters  soon  that 
famous  depot,  the  common  centre  of  all  the  great  railroads 
meeting  here.  The  West  is  paying  back,  with  large  interest, 
the  instruction  and  propulsion  it  once  received  from  the 
East.  New  York  has  no  such  depot  as  this,  though  it  ;has 
far  more  need  of  one  than  any  Western  city.  We  shall  have 
to  go  to  school  to  the  West  erelong,  and  try  to  enlarge  our 
minds  and  methods,  —  especially  our  methods  of  dealing  with 
that  long-suffering  creature,  the  Public.  Many  thousand 
passengers  are  daily  received,  transferred,  and  distributed  at 
this  extensive  depot,  replete  with  every  convenience,  with- 
out loss  of  time,  money,  or  temper. 

The  traveller  arriving  from  the  West  is  immediately 
reminded  that,  at  this  point,  the  West  terminates.  Neither 
the  Western  nor  the  Southern  mind  fully  recognizes  the 
existence  of  any  sum  of  money  between  five  and  ten  cents, 
and  the  Southern  man  considers  it  a  proud  distinction  that 
in  his  "  section  "  there  are  no  copper  coins.  In  this  depot, 
on  the  contrary,  boys  can  be  found  who  charge  seven  cents 
for  a  New  York  paper.  In  this  depot  there  are  hackmen 
who  demand  the  exact  fare  as  by  law  established,  and  who 
manifest  some  concern  for  the  traveller's  convenience  and 
comfort.  Many  other  trifling  circumstances  denote  that  we 
have  reached  a  State  where  exactness  and  economy  are 
instinctive ;  a  State  that  is  neither  Eastern  nor  Western, 
Northern  nor  Southern,  but  constitutes  a  class  by  itself, — 
PENNSYLVANIA, — square,  solid,  plodding,  careful,  saving 


188  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Pennsylvania.  There  is  no  affectation  here  of  stuffing  change 
into  the  pocket  without  counting  it.  There  is  no  one  here 
who  does  not  know  there  are  such  sums  of  money  as  seven, 
eight,  and  nine  cents.  Iron  ore  is  not  converted  into  steel 
bars  so  easily  that  the  people  who  do  it  are  disposed  to  throw 
away  ever  so  small  a  fraction  of  the  results  of  their  labor. 
On  the  other  hand,  these  men  of  iron  know  how  to  be  liberal 
when  there  is  occasion.  During  the  war,  no  regiment,  no 
soldier,  passed  through  Pittsburg  without  being  bountifully 
entertained ;  and  the  Sanitary  Fair  held  here  yielded  a 
larger  sum,  for  the, size  of  the  city,  than  any  other.  The  sum 
was  very  nearly  four  hundred  thousand  dollars.  It  is  people 
who  feel  the  utility  of  copper  coin  that  can  do  such  things. 

From  some  of  the  expensive  foibles  of  human  nature  the 
people  of  Pittsburg  are  necessarily  exempt.  There  can 
never  be  any  dandies  here.  He  would  be  a  very  bold  man 
indeed  who  should  venture  into  the  streets  of  Pittsburg  with 
a  pair  of  yellow  kids  upon  his  hands,  nor  would  they  be 
yellow  more  than  ten  minutes.  All  dainty  and  showy 
apparel  is  forbidden  by  the  state  of  the  atmosphere,  and 
equally  so  is  delicate  upholstery  within  doors.  Some  very 
young  girls,  in  flush  times,  when  wages  are  high,  venture 
forth  with  pink  or  blue  ribbons  in  their  bonnets,  which  may, 
in  highly  favorable  circumstances,  look  clean  and  fresh  for 
half  a  mile,  but  ladies  of  standing  and  experience  never  think 
of  such  extravagance,  and  wear  only  the  colors  that  harmo- 
nize with  the  dingy  livery  of  the  place.  These  ladies  pass 
their  lives  in  an  unending,  ineffectual  struggle  with  the  omni- 
present black.  Everything  is  bought  and  arranged  with 
reference  to  the  ease  with  which  its  surface  can  be  purified 
from  the  ever-falling  soot.  Lace  curtains,  carved  furniture, 
light-colored  carpets,  white  paint,  marble,  elaborate  chande- 
liers, and  every  substance  that  either  catches  or  shows  this 


SOME    OF   THE   WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURG.  189 

universal  and  all-penetrating  product  of  the  place,  are 
avoided  by  sensible  housekeepers.  As  to  the  men  of  Pitts- 
burg,  there  is  not  an  individual  of  them  who  appears  to  take 
the  slightest  interest  in  his  clothes.  If  you  wish  to  be  in 
the  height  of  the  fashion  there,  you  must  be  worth  half  a  mil- 
lion, and  wear  a  shabby  suit  of  fustian.  You  must  be  pro- 
prietor in  some  extensive  "works,"  and  go  about  not  quite 
as  well  dressed  as  the  workmen. 

We  will  endeavor  to  describe  without  exaggeration  the 
state  of  the  atmosphere  in  Pittsburg,  as  we  observed  it  on 
the  6th  of  December,  1866.  We  select  that  day  because  it 
was  the  first  perfect  specimen  of  a  Pittsburg  day  at  which  we 
ever  had  the  pleasure  to  assist,  and  it  consequently  made  an 
impression  on  our  mind.  During  the  autumn,  they  have 
about  thirty  such  days  as  the  one  we  are  about  to  describe. 
Pittsburg  is  proud  of  them.  No  other  city  can  exhibit  such 
a  day.  Pittsburg  amuses  itself  (when  it  can  find  a  moment 
to  spare)  with  the  wonder  which  its  characteristic  and  unap- 
proachable day  excites  in  the  mind  of  the  stranger.  No 
matter  how  dark  it  may  be,  the  people  still  say  that  "this  i» 
nothing  "  to  what  they  can  do  in  the  way  of  darkness.  It 
was  with  irrepressible  exultation,  that  one  of  the  young 
gentlemen  of  the  press  assured  us  that  he  had  been  three 
weeks  waiting  to  have  his  photograph  taken.  We  know  not 
why  it  is  that  no  one  has  given  an  account  of  this  curious 
production  of  nature  and  art,  —  a  Pittsburg  day. 

On  waking  in  the  morning,  while  it  was  still  as  dark  as 
midnight,  we  became  gradually  conscious  that  the  town  was 
all  astir.  The  newsboys  were  piping  their  morning  songs  at 
the  door  of  the  hotel ;  the  street  cars  were  jingling  by ;  the 
steamboat  whistles  were  shrieking ;  those  huge  Pennsylvania 
wagons,  with  their  long  lines  of  horses,  were  rumbling  past ; 
and  in  the  passages  of  the  hotel  frequent  steps  were  heard 


190  TRIUMPHS    OP   ENTERPRISE. 

.of  heavy-booted  travellers  and  of  light-footed  chamber- 
maids. "Ah,"  we  thought,  "this  is  Pennsylvania  indeed! 
What  energy,  what  a  fury  of  industry !  All  Pittsburg  at 
work  before  the  dawn  of  day!  This  surpasses  Chicago. 
What  would  luxurious  St.  Louis  say  of  such  reckless  devo- 
tion to  business  as  this?"  Revolving  such  thoughts,  it 
occurred  to  us,  at  length,  that  it  would  be  only  proper  for  an 
inquisitive  traveller  to  follow  this  example,  and  do  in  Pitts- 
burg  as  the  Pittsburghers  had  already  done.  This  bold  con- 
ception was  executed.  A  match  was  felt  for  and  found,  the 
gas  was  lighted,  and  the  first  duties  of  the  day  were  per- 
formed with  that  feeling  of  moral  superiority  to  mankind  in 
general  which  is  apt  to  steal  over  the  soul  of  a  person  who 
dresses  by  gas-light  for  the  first  time  in  many  years. 
"Would  Brown  do  this?  would  Jones?  would  Robinson? 
What  vigor  there  must  be  in  that  traveller  who  gets  up  to 
study  his  town  before  the  first  streak  of  dawn  ?  " 

Descending  to  the  lower  rooms  of  the  hotel,  elate  with  this 
new  vanity,  we  were  encouraged  to  find  the  gas  all  alight 
and  turned  full  on,  just  as  we  had  left  it  the  evening  before. 
The  dining-room,  too,  was  brilliantly  lighted,  and  full  of 
people  taking  sustenance.  Hardly  prepared  to  go  so  far  as 
to  take  breakfast  by  gas-light, — there  is  a  medium  in  all 
things,  even  in  the  practice  of  heroic  virtue,  — we  neverthe- 
less deemed  it  a  wise  precaution  to  buy  a  newspaper  or  two, 
thinking  it  probable  that  in  such  a  place  the  newspapers 
would  be  all  bought  and  done  with  by  daylight.  Then  we 
strolled  to  the  front  door,  and  out  into  the  street.  It  was 
still  dark,  though  there  were  some  very  faint  indications  of 
daylight.  Everything,  however,  was  in  full  movement,  — 
stores  open  and  lighted  up,  drivers  alert,  newsboys  vocifer- 
ous, vehicles  and  passers-by  as  numerous  as  if  it  were  broad 
day.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  stumble  about  out  of  doors  before 


SOME    OP   THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURGH  191 

daylight,  on  a  damp  and  chilly  December  morning,  especially 
in  a  strange  place.  The  valuable  idea  now  occurred  to  us, 
that  it  would  be  good  economy  to  employ  the  time  required 
by  the  day  to  overcome  the  gloom  of  the  twilight  in  break- 
fasting. This  fine  idea  was  realized,  and  as  it  was  never  pos- 
sible for  us  to  read  a  newspaper  with  the  light  ten  feet  above 
it,  we  soon  lost  ourselves  in  wonder  why  people  order  for 
breakfast,  at  a  hotel,  five  times  as  much  as  they  can  eat.  We 
also  pleased  ourselves  in  anticipating  the  moderation  which 
these  wasters  of  food  will  exhibit  when  the  civilized  custom 
prevails  of  paying  for  what  is  ordered,  and  no  more.  These 
reflections  were  prolonged  and  varied  as  much  as  possible, 
and  we  endeavored  to  check  the  propensity  to  eat  rapidly 
which  besets  him  who  eats  alone  in  a  crowd.  Still  the  day- 
light made  little  progress ;  which  we  excused  on  the  ground 
that  it  had  much  to  contend  with  in  Pittsburg,  and  could  not 
be  expected  to  do  as  well  as  in  more  favored  climes.  We 
left  the  dining-room,  and  looked  about  for  a  seat  close  to  a 
window,  where  perhaps  the  large-type  headings  of  the  news 
might  be  made  out  by  the  aid  of  a  glass.  There  was  just 
light  enough  for  that,  and  we  sat  awhile  waiting  for  more. 
It  came  with  such  strange  and  tantalizing  slowness,  that  it 
occurred  to  us,  at  last,  to  see  what  time  it  was.  One  glance 
at  the  watch  dispelled  our  dream  of  moral  superiority.  It 
was  a  quarter  to  nine  ! 

It  was  a  still,  foggy  morning.  There  being  no  wind  to 
drive  away  the  smoke  issuing  from  five  hundred  huge  chim- 
neys, the  deep  chasm  in  which  Pittsburg  lies  was  filled  full 
of  it,  and  this  smoke  was  made  heavy  and  thick  by  being 
mixed  with  vapor.  At  eleven  o'clock  that  morning  all  the 
gas  in  the  stores  was  lighted,  and  the  light  was  as  necessary 
as  it  ever  can  be  at  night.  At  ten  minutes  past  noon, 
we  chanced  to  be  in  a  book-store,  where  the  book-keeper's 


192  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

desk  was  situated  directly  under  a  skylight,  which  in  any 
other  city  would  have  flooded  the  desk  with  a  dazzling 
excess  of  light.  Even  there,  the  gas  was  burning  with  all 
its  force  from  two  burners,  and  all  its  light  was  required. 
Toward  two  o'clock  the  heavy  masses  of  smoke  lifted  a 
little ;  the  sun  appeared,  in  the  semblance  of  a  large,  clean, 
yellow  turnip ;  and,  for  the  first  time  that  day,  it  was  pos- 
sible to  read  without  artificial  light.  This  interval  lasted 
half  an  hour.  By  three  o'clock,  it  was  darker  than  ever, 
and  so  remained  till  night  came,  to  make  the  darkness 
natural;  when,  the  streets  being  lighted,  Pittsburg  was  more 
cheerful  than  it  had  been  all  day. 

There  is  one  evening  scene  in  Pittsburg  which  no  visitor 
should  miss.  Owing  to  the  abruptness  of  the  hill  behind  the 
town,  there  is  a  street  along  the  edge  of  a  bluff,  from  which 
you  can  look  down  upon  all  that  part  of  the  city  which  lies 
low,  near  the  level  of  the  rivers.  On  the  evening  of  this  dark 
day,  we  were  conducted  to  the  edge  of  the  abyss  and  looked 
over  the  iron  railing  upon  the  most  striking  spectacle  we 
ever  beheld.  The  entire  space  lying  between  the  hills  was 
filled  with  blackest  smoke,  from  out  of  which  the  hidden 
chimneys  sent  forth  tongues  of  flame,  while  from  the  depths 
of  the  abyss  came  up  the  noise  of  hundreds  of  steam- 
hammers.  There  would  be  moments  when  no  flames  were 
visible ;  but  soon  the  wind  would  force  the  smoky  curtains 
aside,  and  the  whole  black  expanse  would  be  dimly  lighted 
with  dtfll  wreaths  of  fire.  It  is  an  unprofitable  business, 
view-hunting ;  but  if  any  one  would  enjoy  a  spectacle  as 
striking  as  Niagara,  he  may  do  so,  by  simply  walking  up  a 
long  hill  to  Cliff  Street  in  Pittsburg,  and  looking  over  into 
—  hell  with  the  lid  taken  off. 

Such  is  the  kind  of  day  which  Pittsburg  boasts.  The  first 
feeling  of  the  stranger  is  one  of  compassion  for  the  people, 


SOME   OF   THE    WONDERS   OF  PITTSBURG.  193 

who  are  compelled  to  live  in  such  an  atmosphere.  When 
hard  pressed,  a  son  of  Pittsburg  will  not  deny  that  the 
smoke  has  its  inconveniences.  He  admits  that  it  does  pre- 
vent some  inconsiderate  people  from  living  there,  who,  but 
for  the  prejudice  against  smoke  in  which  they  have  been 
educated,  would  become  residents  of  the  place.  He  insists, 
however,  that  the  smoke  of  bituminous  coal  kills  malaria, 
and  saves  the  eyesight.  The  smoke,  he  informs  you,  is  a 
perpetual  public  sun-shade  and  color-subduer.  There  is  no 
glare  in  Pittsburg,  except  from  fire  and  red-hot  iron ;  no  object 
meets  the  eye  that  demands  much  of  that  organ,  and  conse- 
quently diseases  of  the  eyes  are  remarkably  rare.  Jt  is 
interesting  to  hear  a  Pittsburgher  discourse  on  this  subject; 
and  it  much  relieves  the  mind  of  a  visitor  to  be  told,  and  to 
have  the  assertion  proved,  that  the  smoke,  so  far  from  being 
an  evil,  is  a  blessing.  The  really  pernicious  atmospheres, 
say  the  Pittsburg  philosophers,  convey  to  man  no  intimation 
of  the  poison  with  which  they  are  laden,  and  we  inhale 
death  while  enjoying  every  breath  we  draw ;  but  this  smoke 
is  an  evil  only  to  the  imagination,  and  it  destroys  every  prop- 
erty of  the  atmosphere  that  is  hostile  to  life.  In  proof  of 
which  the  traveller  is  referred  to  the  tables  of  mortality, 
which  show  that  Pittsburg  is  the  most  favorable  city  in  the 
world  to  longevity.  All  this  is  comforting  to  the  benevolent 
mind.  Still  more  so  is  the  fact,  that  the  fashion  of  living  a 
few  miles  out  of  the  smoke  is  beginning  to  prevail  among 
the  people  of  Pittsburg.  Villages  are  springing  up  as  far 
as  twenty  miles  away,  to  which  the  business  men  repair, 
when,  in  consequence  of  having  inhaled  the  smoke  all  day, 
they  feel  able  to  bear  the  common  country  atmosphere 
through  the  night.  It  is  probable  that,  in  coming  years, 
the  smoky  abyss  of  Pittsburg  will  be  occupied  only  by 
factories  and  "  works,"  and  that  nearly  the  whole  population 


J94  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

will  deny  themselves  the  privilege  of  living  in  the  smoke. 
With  three  rivers  and  half  a  dozen  railroads,  the  people 
have  ready  means  of  access  to  places  of  almost  unequalled 
beauty  and  pleasantness. 

The  "  great  fact "  of  Pittsburg  is  coal.  Iron  and  copper 
can  better  afford  to  come  to  coal  to  be  melted,  than  send  for 
coal  to  come  and  melt  them.  All  those  hills  that  frown 
down  upon  Pittsburg,  and  those  that  rise  from  the  rivers 
back  of  Pittsburg,  have  a  stratum  of  coal  in  them  from  four 
to  twelve  feet  thick.  This  stratum  is  about  three  hundred 
feet  above  the  water's  edge,  and  about  one  hundred  feet 
from  the  average  summit  of  the  hills.  It  is  simply  a  great 
cake  of  coal,  lying  flat  in  the  hills,  uniform,  compact,  as 
though  this  region  had  once  been  a  lake  of  liquid  coal,  upon 
which  mountains  had  been  tossed,  pressing  it  solid.  The 
higher  the  hill  rises  above  the  coal  cake,  the  better  is  the 
coal.  It  has  had  more  pressure,  is  more  compact  and  less 
impure.  What  this  black  stuff  really  is  that  we  have  named 
coal,  how  it  got  laid  away  so  evenly  in  these  hills,  why  the 
stratum  of  coal  is  always  found  just  so  high  up  the  hill,  why 
coal  is  found  here  and  not  eveiy where,  and  why  it  is  better 
here  than  elsewhere,  are  questions  to  which  answers  have 
often  been  attempted.  We  have  read  some  of  these  answers, 
and  remain  up  to  the  present  moment  perfectly  ignorant  of 
the  whole  matter.  The  mere  quantity  of  coal  in  this  region 
is  sufficiently  staggering.  All  the  foundries  and  iron-works 
on  earth  could  find  ample  room  in  this  region,  at  the  edge 
of  a  navigable  stream,  and  have  a  coal-mine  at  their  back 
doors.  The  coal  that  is  used  in  the  foundries  along  the 
Monongahela  is  only  shovelled  twice.  Deep  in  the  heart 
of  the  hill  that  rises  behind  the  foundry,  the  coal  is  mined 
and  thrown  upon  a  car,  by  which  it  is  conveyed  to  the 
mouth  of  the  mine,  and  thence  down  an  inclined  plane  to 


SOME    OF   THE   WONDEBS   OF      PITTSBURG.  195 

the  foundry,  where  it  is  dumped  at  the  door  of  the  furnace 
which  is  to  consume  it.  And,  it  seems,  there  are  fifteen 
thousand  square  miles  of  "  this  sort  of  thing."  The  "  great 
Pittsburg  coal  seam,"  as  it  is  called,  which  consists  of  bitu- 
minous coal  only,  is  put  down  in  the  books  as  covering  eight 
and  a  half  trillions  of  acres.  Mr.  George  H.  Thurston,  of 
Pittsburg,  who  is  learned  in  everything  relating  to  his 
beloved  city,  computes  that  this  area  contains  a  trifle  of 
about  three  trillions  and  a  half  of  bushels  of  workable  coal, 
or  fifty-four  billions  of  tons.  Supposing  this  coal  ^to  be 
worth  at  the  mine  two  dollars  a  ton,  and  supposing  that  we 
could  sell  out  the  whole  seam  for  cash,  Mr.  Thurston  assures 
us  that  we  could  immediately  pay  the  national  debt  twenty- 
seven  times  over.  He  also  remarks,  that  it  would  take  the 
entire  product  of  the  California  gold-mines  for  a  thousand 
years  to  buy  the  coal  of  this  one  seam. 

We  fervently  hope  these  -statements  are  correct.  What 
we  need  is,  a  grand  National,  or,  rather,  a  Continental  Sur- 
vey, on  the  scale  of  the  Coast  Survey,  to  take  an  inventory 
of  our  natural  wealth,  that  could  be  implicitly  relied  on. 
It  is  but  thirteen  years  ago,  that  a  writer  in  the  "Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica,"  who  seemed  deeply  versed  in  his 
subject,  assured  his  readers  that  there  was  in  the  coal-mines 
of  Great  Britain  workable  coal  enough  to  last  nineteen  hun- 
dred years ;  and  now  a  great  man  rises  in  Parliament,  and 
startles  the  world  by  the  assertion  that  the  supply  will  be 
practically  exhausted  in  eighty  years !  If  Mr.  Thurston  is 
right,  and  if  Mr.  Mill  is  right,  the  time  is  at  hand  when 
Sheffield,  Birmingham,  and  the  other  iron  cities  of  England 
will  begin  to  cast  inquiring  eyes  at  these  hills  and  streams 
about  Pittsburg.  If  there  is  indeed  a  supply  of  bituminous 
coal  in  this  region  for  many  thousand  years,  we  see  no 
reason  why  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Washington,  New 


196  TRIUMPHS   OP   ENTERPRISE. 

York,  and  fifty  smaller  cities,  may  not  make  their  gas  in  the 
coal  region,  and  convey  it  across  the  country  in  pipes.  The 
idea  has  been  discussed,  and  there  is  talk  of  a  company  for 
carrying  it  into  effect.  This  matter  of  the  quantity  and,  dis- 
tribution of  coal  is  of  importance  beyond  calculation.  There 
was  one  "  tow  "  of  coal  sent  down  to  New  Orleans  last  year 
by  a  Pittsburg  house,  that  contained  all  the  coal  of  three  and 
a  quarter  acres  of  seam.  It  were  well  to  know  with  cer- 
tainty and  exactness,  how  long  the  Pittsburg  seam  can  keep 
it  up  at  that  rate. 

To  observe  the  whole  process  of  getting  coal  out  of  the 
hills,  it  is  only  necessary  to  walk  half  a  mile  from  the  city. 
Cross  one  of  the  bridges  over  the  Monongahela,  walk  up  the 
hill  that  rises  from  the  banks  of  that  tranquil  stream,  and 
you  behold,  in  the  side  of  the  hill,  a  round  hole  about  large 
enough  for  a  man  to  stand  upright  in.  This  cavity  haa 
smooth  walls  of  coal,  and  there  is  a  narrow  railroad  track  in 
it.  The  air  within  is  neither  damp  nor  chilly,  and  often 
delicate  flowers  are  blooming  about  the  entrance.  Strangers 
usually  enter  this  convenient  and  inviting  aperture,  which 
may  lead  into  the  hill  a  mile,  or  even  three  miles.  After 
walking  a  hundred  yards  or  so,  strangers  usually  think  it 
best  to  go  no  farther.  It  is  as  dark  in  there  as  darkness 
itself,  and  as  silent  as  a  tomb.  The  entrance  shows  like  a 
distant  point  of  light.  The  visitor  listens  for  the  sound  of 
the  pickaxe,  or  the  rumble  of  a  coal-car ;  but  nothing  breaks 
the  horrid  silence  of  the  place,  and,  retracing  his  steps,  he 
sees  with  pleasure  the  point  expanding  into  a  round  O. 
Reassured,  he  peers  again  into  the  mountain's  heart,  .and 
discerns  in  the  far  distance  a  speck  of  light.  This  speck 
slowly,  very  slowly,  approaches.  A  low  and  distant  rumble 
is  heard.  The  speck  of  light  enlarges  a  little.  A  voice  is 
heard,  —  the  voice  of  a  boy  addressing  an  observation  to  a 


SOME    OF   THE   WONDERS   OF   PITTSBUKO.  197 

mule.  The  light,  that  was  but  a  speck,  begins  now  to  dis- 
perse the  gloom ;  and  at  last  we  discover  that  it  is  a  lamp 
fixed  upon  a  mule's  head,  and  that  the  mule  is  drawing  two 
or  three  car-loads  of  coal,  and  is  driven  by  a  perfectly  black 
white  boy,  who  also  has  a  lamp  upon  his  head.  The  coal  is 
immediately  dumped,  the  mule  is  attached  to  the  other  end 
of  the  train,  and  reenters  the  black  hole.  A  stranger  who 
has  a  proper  respect  for  his  garments  will  hesitate  to  climb 
over  into  that  exceedingly  black  car ;  but  curiosity  is  fre- 
quently stronger  than  principle,  and  there  are  travellers  who 
will  ride  into  the  black  bowels  of  the  earth  if  they  see  an 
empty  car  going  thither.  What  a  strange  sensation  I  How 
great  the  distance !  The  round  O  of  the  entrance,  after 
dwindling  to  a  white  dot,  disappears  quite,  and  it  is  long 
before  anything  becomes  visible  in  the  depths  of  the  mine. 
As  we  pass  along  this  black  and  narrow  street, — just  wide 
enough  for  a  car,  and  not  high  enough  for  a  man  to  stand 
upright  in  the  car,  —  we  observe  openings  like  doors  into 
black,  empty  rooms.  These  are  "  rooms."  "When  a  mine 
is  opened,  the  first  thing,  of  course,  is  to  make  a  straight 
passage  into  it ;  but  on  each  side  of  the  passage  "  rooms " 
are  opened,  one  man  being  assigned  to  each,  who  excavates 
the  apartment  in  solitude.  The  partitions  left  between  the 
"  rooms  "  keep  the  hill  from  settling  down,  and  they  remain 
intact  until  the  seam  is  worked  out.  Then  the  partitions  are 
knocked  away  and  the  coal  removed.  The  hill  is  then  only 
supported  by  upright  logs,  two  or  three  feet  thick,  which, 
as  the  hill  settles,  are  pressed  slowly  down  and  flattened 
out. 

After  a  long  ride  in  the  car,  signs  of  life  appear ;  a  speck 
of  light  is  seen  in  the  distance,  and  the  click  of  a  pickaxe  is 
faintly  heard.  The  train  -of  empty  coal-cars  stops  at  the  door 
of  a  "  room,"  and  one  of  them  is  cast  off,  and  pushed  into 


198  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

this  apartment  by  a  turnout.  The  visitors  alight  as  best  the}' 
can,  and  find  themselves  in  the  coaliest  coal-hole  they  have 
ever  known.  Nothing  is  seen,  felt,  or  smelt  but  coal ;  noth- 
ing is  heard  but  the  strokes  of  an  invisible  pickaxe,  wielded 
by  an  unseen  arm.  The  solitary  occupant  of  this  "room  "  is 
invisible  at  the  moment,  because  he  is  employed  in  what  the 
miners  call  "bearing  in."  When  a  miner  finds  himself 
before  a  wall  of  coal,  from  which  he  is  to  excavate  conven- 
ient masses  of  that  precious  commodity,  the  first  thing  he 
does  is  to  "  bear  in."  To  "  bear  in "  is  to  get  down  upon 
your  knees,  and  with  a  pickaxe  cut  deeply  in  at  the  bottom 
of  the  seam  of  coal,  —  as  far  in  as  you  can  reach,  even  by 
lying  down.  When  the  miner  has  made  his  gash,  three  feet 
deep  and  six  feet  wide,  it  is  very  easy,  by  wedges,  or  even 
by  the  pickaxe  alone,  to  bring  down  all  the  upper  part  of  the 
seam  in  pieces  small  enough  to  handle.  Our  miner  was 
bearing  in,  at  the  moment  of  our  entrance,  with  enthusiasm, 
owing  to  his  being  a  little  behind  with  his  heap  for  the  next 
load.  Each  miner  expects  to  have  a  'car-load  ready  when  his 
car  comes,  and  he  lays  out  his  work  accordingly.  His  task 
is  done  when  he  has  dug  out  the  coal,  and  loaded  it  upon  the 
car.  And  it  is  for  doing  these  two  things  that  he  is  paid  a 
certain  sum  per  bushel.  Seven  years  ago,  that  sum  was 
three-quarters  of  a  cent ;  it  is  now  four  cents  ;  and  the  miners 
used  to  get  out  more  coal  per  day  when  the  price  was  low 
than  they  do  now  at  the  high  price.  Our  eager  miner  hear- 
ing voices  in  his  room,  rose  at  length,  and  dimly  revealed 
himself  by  the  light  of  a  very  small  tin  lamp  that  hung  loosely 
on  his  forehead.  What  a  picture  he  was,  as  he  peered  over 
the  heap  of  coal  with  his  black  cap  fitting  close  to  his  head, 
his  dangling  tin  lamp,  his  coaly  visage,  his  red  lips  and  white 
teeth,  and  his  black  eyes  glistening  in  the  midst  of  the  dull 
black  of  the  rest  of  his  countenance  1  He  looked  the  Spirit 


SOME    OF    THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBUEG.  199 

of  the  Coal-mine !  He  was,  however,  introduced  to  the 
intruders  as  "Mr.  Gallagher";  and  a  very  merry,  social, 
pleasant  fellow  he  was. 

People  come  into  the  mines  prepared  to  regard  with  com- 
passion these  grimy  workers' in  the  eternal  dark  ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  they  finrl  them  the  gayest  of  men,  very  cheerful 
and  companionable,  with  a  keen  sense  of  independence  -  and 
personal  dignity.  We  discovered  at  once  that  this  man  of 
the  dangling  lamp  was  indeed  Mr.  Gallagher.  He  begins 
work  when  he  likes,  works  as  fast  as  he  likes,  or  as  slow, 
and  goes  home  when  he  likes.  His  "  room "  is  his  own 
against  the  world  ;  and  when  he  has  dug  out  of  it  his  regular 
hundred  bushels,  which  he  usually  accomplishes  about  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  he  takes  up  his  oil-bottle  and  his 
dinner-kettle,  gets  upon  a  load  of  coal,  rides  to  daylight,  and 
saunters  home.  When  he  has  had  his  thorough  Saturday- 
afternoon  wash,  and  has  put  on  his  fine  Sunday  broadcloth, 
he  looks  like  a  pale,  muscular  poet.  The  sun  does  not  brown 
his  skin,  nor  the  wind  roughen  it.  He  works  in  the  dark,  in 
a  still  air,  and  at  a  uniform  temperature  of  about  sixty 
degrees,  the  year  round.  If  he  has  a  fancy  to  get  rich,  he 
can.  Many  of  the  proprietors  about  here  once  dug  coal  at 
three  quarters  of  a  cent  per  bushel.  The  people  who  live 
near  the  mines  along  the  Monongahela  speak  well  of  the 
miners  as  a  class.  They  are  proud5  honest,  and  orderly.  A 
few  of  them,  on  festive  days,  indulge  in  their  native  pastime 
of  whipping  their  wives  ;  but  even  the  few  who  do  this  are 
acquiring  a  taste  for  nobler  pleasures.  The  farmers  say  that 
their  apples  and  watermelons  are  as  safe  here  as  anywhere. 
The  miners  are  proud  of  their  right  to  vote,  are  prompt  to 
exercise  that  right,  and  generally  send  their  children  to 
school. 

We  asked  "Mr.  Gallagher"  whether  the  practice  of  bis 

13 


200  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

vocation  was  attended  by  any  danger.  Like  most  other 
men  in  perilous  emplojonents,  he  protested  that  there  was 
not  the  least  danger,  if  a  man  was  only  careful.  In  proof 
of  which  he  adduced  the  fact,  that  in  this  mine  only  one 
man  had  been  killed  in  eleven  months,  and  he  was  killed 
by  a  piece  of  "horseback"  falling  on  him.  Horseback  is  a 
thick  scale  of  remarkably  heavy  stone  that  is  always  found 
at  the  top  of  the  stratum  of  coal,  and  which  ought  to  fall 
when  the  coal  is  cut  away  from  under  it.  But  masses  of 
it  often  adhere  to  the  roof  of  the  mine,  and  cannot  be  dis- 
lodged without  more  labor  than  a  miner  is  always  willing  to 
bestow.  In  almost  every  "room"  of  a  mine,  therefore,  there 
will  be  heavy  chunks  of  horseback  clinging  to  the  roof, 
which  are  sure  to  fall  soon,  and  may  fall  at  any  instant. 
The  solitary  occupant  of  the  room  intends  to  avoid  stand- 
ing under  these  masses.  He  also  intends  to  employ  his 
first  leisure  in  prying  them  off.  But  time  passes ;  he  forgets, 
in  the  heat  of  his  work,  the  overhanging  peril ;  and  some 
day  the  solitary  worker  in  the  next  room  notices  that  his 
neighbor's  pickaxe  has  ceased  to  strike.  Down  there  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth,  each  man  working  by  himself,  sepa- 
rated from  his  fellow  by  a  wall  of  coal  several  feet  thick, 
men  acquire  a  strange  power  of  knowing  how  it  fares  with 
their  friends  in  the  rooms  adjoining.  They  can  tell  what 
they  are  doing,  whether  they  are  forward  with  their  load  or 
behind  with  it,  whether  the  coal  is  working  easily  or  hard, 
whether  they  are  working  merrily  or  dully,  whether  they 
are  good-tempered  or  cross.  The  sudden  cessation  of  all 
noise  in  a  room,  at  an  hour  when  work  is  going  on,  soon 
attracts  attention,  and  the  poor  miner  is  found  Avith  his 
lamp  and  his  life  crushed  out,  under  half  a  ton  of  horse- 
back. This  is  said  to  be  the  only  danger  to  the  miners  of 
the  Pittsburg  Seam.  If  noxious  gases  are  generated,  it  is 


SOME   OF   THE   WONDERS   OF   PITTSBUBG.  201 

easy  to  open  a  passage  through  to  the  other  side  of  the  hill 
for  ventilation,  or  make  a  chimney  through  the  roof.  It  is 
difficult  to  see  how  fifty  or  sixty  billions  of  tons  of  coal 
could  be  put  where  man  could  get  at  them  more  conven- 
iently. Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who  was  in  this  region  some 
years  ago,  was  particularly  struck  with  the  accessibility  of 
this  coal,  and  observed  that  he  never  saw  anywhere  else 
coal  so  easily  worked  and  loaded. 

The  population  of  the  coal  region  near  Pittsburg  is  about 
thirty-five  thousand,  and  seven  thousand  of  these  are 
employed  in  and  about  the  mines.  The  annual  product  of 
the  mines  is  something  near  two  millions  and  a  half  of  tons, 
of  which  one  third  is  consumed  at  Pittsburg,  and  the  rest 
is  sent  away  down  the  rivers  to  fill  the  valley  of  the  Missis- 
sippi with  smoke.  In  one  week  of  1866,  seven  steamboats 
arrived  at  New  Orleans,  having  in  tow  fifty-eight  coal- 
barges  from  Pittsburg,  containing  in  all  forty-five  thousand 
tons  of  coal,  worth  at  New  Orleans  three  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars. 

As  to  that  third  part  of  the  coal  product  of  the  great 
Pittsburg  Seam  which  Pittsburg  itself  consumes,  it  performs 
a  prodigious  quantity  of  work,  assisted  by  many  thousand 
mechanics  and  laborers.  There  are  in  the  congregation  of 
towns  which  the  outside  world  knows  only  by  the  name  of 
Pittsburg,  five  hundred  manufactories  and  "works."  Fifty 
of  these  are  glass-works,  in  which  one  half  of  all  our  glass- 
ware is  made,  and  which  employ  three  thousand  persons. 
This  important  branch  of  business  was  planted  here  in  1787 
by  a  person  no  less  distinguished  than  Albert  Gallatin,  and 
it  has  grown  to  proportions  of  which  no  one  seems  to  be 
aware  out  of  Pittsburg.  The  fifteen  bottle-works  here  pro- 
duce the  incredible  number  of  seventy  million  bottles  and 
vials  per  annum.  But  Pittsburg  (so  we  were  told  in  Nich- 


202  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

olas  Loiigworth's  wine-cellar  at  Cincinnati)  has  not  yet 
learned  to  make  a  champagne-bottle  that  will  stand  the 
pressure  of  that  wine.  A  serviceable  champagne-bottle  has 
never  yet  been  made  in  the  United  States  ;  and  we  have  to 
send  to  France  for  all  that  we  require  in  Ohio,  Missouri, 
and  California.  We  learned  (in  the  same  subterranean 
retreat)  that  the  Pittsburg  champagne-bottle  comes  nearest 
to  being  what  a  champagne-bottle  should  be,  of  any  made  in 
the  United  States.  One  in  ten  of  the  best  French  bottles 
bursts  in  the  cellar  of  the  bottler;  one  in  six  of  the  best 
Pittsburg  bottles.  But  the  truth  is,  we  are  such  inveterate 
swillers  of  every  kind  of  abominable  mess  that  admits  of 
being  bottled,  labelled,  and  advertised,  that  the  Pittsburg 
bottle-makers  have  not  had  time  yet  to  develop  the  higher 
branches  of  their  vocation.  Any  sort  of  glass  will  do  for 
quack  medicine. 

There  are  also  fifteen  window-glass  works  at  Pittsburg, 
which  produce  nearly  half  a  million  boxes  of  that  commod- 
ity every  year,  worth  about  two  millions  and  a  half  of  dol- 
lars. It  so  happened  that  we  had  a  burning  curiosity  to 
know  how  window-glass  is  made,  and  one  of  the  first  things 
we  did  at  Pittsburg  was  to  gratify  this  noble  thirst  for 
knowledge.  Who  would  have  -thought  that  common  win- 
dow-glass is  blown?  It  is  actually  blown  like  a  bottle.  The 
blower  stands  on  a  bench,  and  as  he  blows,  he  swings  his 
tube  to  and  fro,  which  causes  the  soft  globule  to  lengthen 
out  into  a  cylinder,  five  feet  long  and  one  foot  in  diameter. 
This  cylinder  is  afterwards  slit  down  all  its  length  by  a 
diamond,  and  placed  in  an  oven,  with  the  diamond-cut 
uppermost.  As  that  oven  grows  hot,  the  cylinder  divides 
where  the  diamond  marked  it,  gently  falls  apart,  and  lies 
down  flat  on  the  bottom  of  the  oven.  There  is  your  sheet 
of  window-glass.  As  soon  as  it  is  cooled,  it  is  cut  into  the 


8OME    OF   THE   WONDERS   OF   PITTSBUEG.  203 

required  sizes  by  a  diamond.  There  are  also  fifteen  flint- 
glass  works  at  Pittsburg,  the  annual  product  of  which  is 
more  than  four  thousand  tons  of  the  finest  glassware,  worth 
two  millions  of  dollars.  The  total  value  of  the  glass  made 
at  Pittsburg  every  year  is  about  seven  millions  of  dollars, 
which  is  almost  exactly  one  half  of  the  value  of  our  whole 
annual  product  of  glassware.  This  is  one  item  of  the 
yearly  work  done  by  Pittsburg  coal  at  Pittsburg.  Other 
trifles  are  sixteen  potteries,  forty-six  foundries,  thirty-one 
rolling-mills,  thirty-three  manufactories  of  machinery,  and 
fifty-three  oil-refineries.  Such  a  thing  it  is  to  have  plenty 
of  coal ! 

Oil  Creek  is  a  branch  of  the  Alleghany  Eiver,  and 
empties  into  it  one  hundred  miles  above  Pittsburg. 
Pittsburg  is,  consequently,  the  great  petroleum  mart 
of  the  world.  It  is  but  five  years  ago  that  this  material 
became  important ;  and  yet  there  were  received  at  Pittsburg 
during  the  year  1866,  more  than  sixteen  hundred  thousand 
barrels  of  it.  The  Alleghany  River  is  one  of  the  swiftest 
of  navigable  streams ;  but  there  is  never  a  moment  when 
its  surface  at  Pittsburg  is  not  streaked  with  petroleum.  It 
would  not  require  remarkable  talent  in  an  inhabitant  of  this 
place  to  "  set  the  river  on  fire."  The  crude  oil  is  floated 
down  this  impetuous  river  in  the  slightest-built  barges,  — 
mere  oblong  boxes,  made  of  common  boards, — into  which 
the  oil  is  poured  as  into  an  enormous  trough.  Petroleum  is 
lighter  than  water,  and  would  float  very  well  without  being 
boxed  in ;  only  it  would  be  difficult  to  keep  each  pro- 
prietor's lot  separate.  It  needs  but  a  slight  accident  to 
knock  a  hole  in  one  of  these  thin  barges.  When  such  an 
accident  has  occurred,  the  fact  is  revealed  by  the  rising  of 
the  petroleum  in  the  barge ;  and  the  vessel  gets  fuller  and 
fuller,  until  it  overflows.  In  a  few  minutes  the  petroleum 


204  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

lies  all  spread  out  upon  the  swift  river,  making  its  way 
toward  Pittsburg,  while  the  barge  is  filled  with  water  and 
sunk. 

We  were  prepared  to  discourse  wisely  upon  the  subject 
of  oil,  —  its  discovery,  the  fortunes  made  and  squandered 
"  in "  it,  and  the  healthy,  proper  way  in  which  oil  is  now 
rising  from  the  rank  of  a  game  to  that  of  a  business.  We 
give  place,  however,  to  the  editor  of  the  "  Crawford 
Journal"  (published  in  the  oil  region),  who  related,  while 
we  were  at  Pittsburg,  a  story  which  is  worth  more  than 
preaching.  An  item  appeared  in  the  papers,  recording  the 
sale  of  a  certain  farm  on  Oil  Creek  for  taxes,  which  elicited 
from  the  editor  of  the  "  Crawford  Journal "  the  following 
remarkable  explanation :  — 

"  This  farm  was  among  the  first  of  the  oil-producing  farms  of 
the  valley.  Early  in  1863,  the  Van  Slyke  well,  on  this  farm,  was 
struck,  and  flowed  for  some  time  at  the  rate  of  twenty-five  hundred 
barrels  per  day,  and  several  wells  yielding  from  two  hundred  to 
eight  hundred  barrels  were  struck  at  subsequent  periods.  Beside 
these,  there  were  many  smaller  wells ;  and  the  territory,  though 
sadly  mismanaged,  is  still  regarded  as  among  the  best  in  the  oil 
region.  In  1864,  Widow  McClintock  died  from  the  effects  of  burns 
received  while  kindling  a  fire  with  crude  oil.  At  this  time,  the 
average  daily  income  from  the  landed  interest  of  the  farm  was  two 
thousand  dollars  ;  and  by  her  will  the  property,  with  all  her  posses^ 
sions  in  money,  was  left,  without  reservation,  to  her  adopted  son, 
John  W.  Steele,  then  about  twenty  years  of  age.  In  the  iron  safe 
where  the  old  lady  kept  her  money  was  found  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars,  two  thirds  of  the  amount  in  greenbacks, 
and  the  balance  in  gold.  Mrs.  McClintock  was  hardly  cold  in  her 
coffin  before  young  Steele,  who  appears  to  have  had  nothing  natu- 
rally vicious  in  his  composition,  was  surrounded  by  a  set  of  vam- 
pires who  clung  to  him  as  long  as  he  had  a  dollar  remaining.  The 
young  millionnaire's  head  was  evidently  turned  by  his  good  for- 


SOME    OF    THE   WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURG.  205 

tune,  as  has  been  that  of  many  an  older  man  who  made  his  '  pile 
in  oil ' ;  and  he  was  of  the  opinion  that  his  money  would  accumu- 
late too  rapidly  unless  it  was  actually  thrown  away,  and  throw  it 
away  he  did.  Many  of  the  stories  concerning  his  career  in  New 
York  and  Philadelphia  savor  strongly  of  fiction,  and  would  not  be 
credited  were  they  not  so  well  authenticated.  Wine,  women, 
horses,  faro,  and  general  debauchery  soon  made  a  wreck  of  that 
princely  fortune  ;  and  in  twenty  months  Johnny  Steele  squandered 
two  millions  of  dollars.  Hon.  John  Morrissey,  M.  C.,  'went 
through '  him  at  faro  to  the  amount  of  one  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars in  two  nights ;  he  bought  high-priced  turnouts,  and  after 
driving  them  an  hour  or  two  gave  them  away ;  equipped  a  large 
minstrel  troupe,  and  presented  each  member  with  a  diamond  pin 
and  ring,  and  kept  about  him,  besides,  two  or  three  men  who  were 
robbing  him  day  after  day.  He  is  now  filling  the  honorable  posi- 
tion of  doorkeeper  for  Skiff  and  Gaylord's  Minstrels,  the  company 
he  organized,  and  is — to  use  a  very  expressive,  but  not  strictly 
classical  phrase  —  completely  '  played  out.' 

"  The  wealth  obtained  by  those  who  worked  so  assiduously  to 
effect  Steele' s  ruin  gave  little  permanent  benefit  to  its  possessors. 
The  person,  most  brazen  and  chiefly  instrumental  in  bringing  about 
the  present  condition  of  affairs  was  the  notorious  Seth  Slocum, 
who  hung  around  this  city  several  weeks  last  summer.  He  was 
worth  at  one  time  over  one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  which  he  had 
1  captured '  from  Steele,  and  laid  aside  for  a  rainy  day ;  but  when 
the  tatter's  money  vanished,  this  amount  soon  took  unto  itself 
wings,  and  he  is  at  present  known  among  his  old  associates  as  a 
'  dead  beat.'  At  last  accounts,  Slocum  was  incarcerated  in  the 
jail  of  a  neighboring  county  for  various  breaches  of  the  peace,  and 
was  unable  to  obtain  bail  in  the  sum  of  five  hundred  dollars. 
Exemplifications  these  of  the  old  adage,  '  Easy  come,  easy  go  ' ; 
or  the  other,  '  Fools  and  their  money  are  soon  parted.' " 

This  is  merely  the  most  striking  and  best  known  of  many 
similar  instances.  It  is  doubtful  if  wealth  suddenly  acquired, 
without  merit  on  the  part  of  the  recipient,  has  ever  been  of 


206  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

real  service ;  and  we  presume  Johnny  Steele  did  the  best 
thing  possible  for  him  in  getting  rid  of  his  absurd  millions 
in  twenty  months.  He  might  have  staggered  under  them 
twenty  years,  and  even  then  had  enough  left  to  keep  him 
from  his  proper  place  in  the  world.  Happily,  all  this  is 
over  in  the  oil  country,  where  the  business  languishes  after 
the  excitements  of  recent  years,  and  is  settling  down  to  be 
a  safe  and  legitimate  pursuit,  like  coal,  iron,  and  salt. 

It  is,  however,  the  iron-works  of  Pittsburg  that  usually 
attract  the  stranger  first,  astonish  him  most,  and  detain  him 
longest.  We  all  know  the  precise  quantity  of  "  dirt  "  which 
each  of  us  has  to  eat  in  a  lifetime.  It  is  one  peck  But  is 
the  gentle  reader  aware  that  each  inhabitant  of  the  United 
States  "consumes"  about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
pounds  of  iron  every  year  ?  So  we  are  assured  ;  and  we  are 
also  informed  that  the  fact  is  highly  honorable  to  us,  since 
the  quantity  of  iron  consumed  by  a  nation  is  one  of  the  tests 
of  its  civilization.  A  Spaniard,  for  example,  gets  along  with 
only  five  pounds  of  iron  in  a  year,  and  a  Russian  finds  ten 
pounds  sufficient.  An  Austrian  is  satisfied  with  fifteen,  a 
Swiss  with  twenty-two,  a  Norwegian  with  thirty ;  but  a 
German  must  have  fifty  pounds,  a  Frenchman  sixty,  a  Bel- 
gian seventy.  Of  the  iron  consumed  in  the  United  States, 
it  appears  that  about  two  fifths  are  manufactured  at  Pitts- 
burg,  in  those  hundred  and  thirteen  iron-works  mentioned 
before.  There  is  not  one  of  those  establishments  in  which 
an  intelligent  person  may  not  find  wonders  enough  to  enter- 
tain him  all  day ;  but  in  the  compass  of  one  brief  article  we 
can  do  little  more  than  allude  to  one  or  two  of  the  more 
famous  and  established  "lions."  Pittsburg,  as  we  have 
before  remarked,  is  densely  packed  with  marvels.  Go 
where  you  will,  you  find  something  of  the  most  particular 
interest,  that  demands  to  be  examined,  and  most  richly 


SOME    OF   THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURG.  207 

rewards  examination.  If  ever  we  establish  a  college,  we 
shall  arrange  it  so,  that  the  senior  class  shall  spend  six  weeks 
at  and  near  Pittsburg,  in  order  to  vivify  their  knowledge  of 
geology,  chemistry,  and  the  other  Sciences. 

Down  by  the  swift  and  turbid  Alleghany,  close  to  the 
river,  as  all  the  great  foundries  are,  we  discovered  with 
difficulty,  on  a  very  dark  morning,  the  celebrated  Fort  Pitt 
Foundry,  where  twenty-five  hundred  of  the  great  guns  were 
cast  that  blew  the  late  Confederacy  out  of  water.  In  this 
establishment  may  be  seen  the  sublime  of  the  mechanic  arts. 
Only  here,  on  the  continent  of  America,  have  there  ever 
been  cast  those  monsters  of  artillery  which  are  called  by  the 
ridiculous  diminutive  of  "  the  twenty-inch  gun."  A  twenty- 
inch  gun  is  one  of  those  corpulent  pieces  of  ordnance  that 
we  see  mounted  on  forts  about  our  harbors,  which  weigh 
sixty  tons,  cost  fifty  thousand  dollars  each,  and  send  a  ball 
of  a  thousand  pounds  three  miles.  To  be  exact,  the  ball 
weighs  one  thousand  and  eighty  pounds,  and  it  costs  one 
hundred  and  sixty-five  dollars.  To  discharge  a  twenty-inch 
gun,  loaded  with  one  of  these  balls,  requires  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  pounds  of  powder,  worth  forty  cents  a 
pound ;  so  that  every  time  one  of  the  guns  is  fired  it  costs  a 
hundred  and  ninety-five  dollars,  without  counting  the  wear 
and  tear  of  the  gun  and  its  carriage,  and  the  pay  of  the  men. 

The  foundry  where  these  huge  guns  are  made  is  large, 
lofty,  dark,  and  remarkably  silent.  Nearly  every  operation 
goes  on  in  silence,  and  without  the  least  fuss  or  hurry.  We 
will  endeavor  to  show,  in  a  few  words,  how  it  is  that  a  large 
lump  of  iron  with  a  hole  in  it  should  cost  so  much. 

To  people  outside  of  the  iron  world,  iron  is  iron ;  but  to 
people  inside  of  that  world  there  are  as  many  varieties  of 
iron  as  there  are  sources  of  supply.  We  have  often  been 
amused  at  the  positiveness  with  which  the  inhabitants  of  iron 


208  TKICJMPHS   OF   ENTEEPEISE. 

districts  declare  their  iron  to  be  the  "best  in  the  world." 
The  people  of  Marquette,  upon  Lake  Superior,  the  people 
interested  in  the  Iron  Mountain  of  Missouri,  the  iron-makers 
of  Lake  Champlain,  and  all  who  have  anything  to  do  with  an 
iron  mine,  assert  the  superiority  of  their  own  iron.  The 
best  of  it  is,  that  all  these  people  are  right ;  for  each  of  the 
great  brands  of  iron  actually  is  the  best  in  the  world  —  for 
some  purposes.  The  iron  for  these  large  cannon  comes 
from  the  Bloomfield  Mine,  in  Blair  County,  Pennsylvania, 
and  there  is  in  the  United  States  but  one  other  iron  as  good 
for  guns  ;  and  that  is  found  in  far-off  Massachusetts.  Eve- 
rything depends  upon  the  even  and  sufficient,  density  of  the 
iron ;  therefore,  the  pigs  of  iron  from  the  Bloomfield  Mine 
are  again  melted  and  purified  here.  They  have  an  ingenious 
machine  for  testing  the  strength  of  iron.  By  a  system  of 
levers,  a  round  piece  of  iron,  one  inch  thick,  is  subjected  to 
a  steady  pull  until  it  breaks,  and  the  operator  is  enabled  to 
ascertain  precisely  how  many  pounds  weight  it  will  bear.  The 
same  machine  tests  it  by  twisting  and  by  crushing.  It  is 
this  machine  which  determines  the  rank  and  value  of  all 
iron. 

The  mould  in  which  the  cannon  are  cast  is  an  enormous 
structure  of  iron  and  sand,  which  weighs,  when  ready  for 
the  metal,  more  than  forty  tons.  The  preparation  of  the 
mould  is  the  most  difficult  and  delicate  of  all  the  work  done 
in  the  foundry ;  but  it  would  be  nearly  impossible  to  convey 
an  idea  of  it  on  paper.  When  it  is  ready  it  is  hoisted  by 
steam  derricks,  and  let  down  into  a  pit,  where  it  stands  on 
end,  with  open  mouth,  ready  for  the  fiery  fluid.  Those 
steam  derricks  are  wonderful.  One  man,  by  their  assistance, 
lifts,  carries,  and  deposits  upon  a  car,  in  thirty  minutes,  a 
twenty-inch  gun  in  its  mould,  weighing  in  all  (including  the 
waste  metal)  one  hundred  and  thirty  tons ;  and  this  he  does 


SOME    OF   THE    WONDEKS    OF   PITTSBURG.  209 

with  about  as  much  physical  exertiori  as  is  required  to  draw 
a  glass  of  beer  from  a  barrel.  The  whole  force  of  the 
foundry  —  two  hundred  and  fifty  men^ — could  not  move 
such  a  mass  one  inch  in  twenty-four  hours,  unaided  by 
machinery. 

The  thrilling  event  of  the  day  is  the  casting,  which  occurs 
here  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  one  great  gun  being' cast 
every  day.  Three  furnaces,  early  in  the  morning,  are 
stacked  full  of  pigs  of  iron,  as  high  as  a  man's  head,  and 
about  ten  o'clock  the  fires  are  lighted  under  them.  In  three 
hours  the  stacks  of  pigs  are  all  melted  down  into  a  pool  of 
liquid  iron  one  foot  deep.  From  each  of  the  three  furnaces 
an  iron  trough,  lined  with  clay,  extends  acfoss  the  wide  and 
gloomy  foundry,  to  the  mound  which  is  this  day  to  be  filled. 
The  distance  is  a  hundred  feet,  perhaps  ;  and  the  iron  troughs 
are  laid  in  curves,  to  prevent  a  too  rapid  flow  of  metal. 
(The  Ohio  River  is  arranged  on  the  same  principle.)  Men 
are  stationed  along  each  trough  to  comb  off  the  dross,  and 
there  are  men  at  the  mould  with  levers  and  other  imple- 
ments ;  while  Joseph  Kaye,  the  foreman  and  genius  of  the 
place,  who  learned  his  trade  here  thirty  years  ago,  and  who 
is  the  inventor  of  important  parts  of  the  process  we  are 
beholding,  stands  apart,  to  give  the  word  and  overlook  the 
whole.  The  word  is  given.  A  man  at  each  furnace  sets 
the  stream  running.  At  once,  three  fiery  serpents  of  the 
fieriest  fire  come  coiling  down  those  troughs  with  a  kind 
of  slow  rush,  and  make  for  the  mould,  into  which  they  go 
headlong,  and  fall  to  the  bottom  with  a  sputtering  thud. 
The  resemblance  to  a  serpent  is  perfect,  until  the  stream  has 
reached  the  gun.  The  stranger  fancies  that  he  can  see  the 
fiery  devil's  eyes,  and  that  the  sparks  that  fly  from  his  head 
are  the  signs  of  a  deadly  anger.  The  streams  run  for  about 
twenty  minutes,  and  then,  at  a  signal,  a  lump  of  clay  is 


210  TKIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

thrust  into  the  aperture  of  each  furnace ;  the  streams  dwin- 
dle to  threads,  and  dry  up. 

Usually,  all  goes  so  smoothly  that  it  seems  as  if  it  could 
go  no  other  way.  But  there  are  frightful  perils  in  the  busi- 
ness. Sometimes  an  obstruction  will  occur  in  one  of  the 
troughs,  and  the  liquid  metal  will  overflow,  and  spread  about 
the  ground ;  or  the  supply  of  iron  will  be  exhausted  before 
the  mould  is  quite  full ;  or  a  break  will  occur  in  the  mould, 
and  the  iron  burst  through,  spoiling  the  mould,  and  wasting 
itself  in  the  bottom  of  the  pit.  It  is  at  such  times  that 
Joseph  Kaye  asserts  his  kingly  power,  and  stands  self-pos- 
sessed in  the  midst  of  panic-stricken  men.  Many  a  great 
gun  about  to  lap^e  into  hopeless  ruin  has  been  saved  by  his 
courage  and  skill.  There  have  been  times  when  every  man 
fled  but  him,  and  he  sufficed.  They  point  out  one  honest 
German  who  was  so  thoroughly  terrified  by  the  breaking  of 
a  steam  derrick  with  a  gun  hanging  to  it,  that  he  ran  home 
at  the  top  of  his  speed,  and  could  not  be  coaxed  back  till  six 
months  had  passed.  Another  German  was  once  in  a  most 
painful  dilemma.  The  furnaces  having  run  dry  before  the 
gun-mould  was  quite  full,  the  foreman,  to  save  the  gun, 
ordered  metal  to  be  brought  from  another  furnace  in  iron 
pails.  These  pails  of  liquid  iron  are  swung  upon  a  lever,  and 
carried  by  two  men.  Our  German  was  so  unfortunate  as  to 
stumble  a  little,  which  caused  some  of  the  melted  metal  to 
fall  into  his  low  shoe.  But,  exquisite  as  the  agony  was,  he 
was  obliged  to  endure  it ;  since,  in  the  hurry  of  the  moment, 
there  was  no  one  who  could  stop  to  help  him,  while  to  have 
let  go  his  load  had  been  ruin  and  death.  The  man  walked 
steadily  to  the  mould,  and  assisted  his  comrade  to  empty  the 
pail  into  it,  before  seeking  relief. 

After  the  gun  has  been  cast,  a  variety  of  curious  precau- 
tions are  taken  to  cause  the  eighty  tons  of  iron  to  cool  in 


SOME   OF   THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURG.  211 

the  manner  most  conducive  to  the  strength  of  the  gun.  If 
nothing  of  this  kind  were  done,  the  gun  would  be  thirty  days 
in  getting  cool  enough  to  handle ;  but,  by  the  constant  flow 
of  cold  water  in  and  out  of  the  bore,  the  cooling  is  shortened 
to  eighteen  days.  Then  the  huge  thing  is  gently  lifted  out 
of  its  pit,  gently  swung  across  the  dim  foundry,  and  gently 
laid  in  the  turning-shop ;  where  the  great  rough  end  is  -cut 
off,  where  the  outside  is  turned  smooth,  where  the  inside  is 
bored  to  the  proper  size,  where  it  loses  twenty  tons  of  metal. 
The  mere  boring  of  one  of  these  monsters  takes  four  weeks, 
night  and  day,  Sundays  and  week-days.  When  once  the 
boring  has  been  begun,  it  can  never  stop  until  it  is  finished 
without  spoiling  the  gun;  since,  if  the  gun  cools,  the 
temperature  that  existed  at  the  moment  when  the  boring 
ceased  can  never  be  exactly  reproduced,  and  consequently 
there  will  be  a  variation  in  the  size  of  the  bore.  A  varia- 
tion in  the  bore  of  a  hundredth  part  of  an  inch  insures  the 
rejection  of  the  gun,  and  a  hundredth  part  of  an  inch  is  less 
than  the  space  between  the  teeth  of  a  fine-tooth  comb.  Issu- 
ing from  the  lathe  all  shaven  and  shorn,  the  gun  is  laid  upon 
two  cars  fastened  together,  taken  seventeen  miles  out  of 
town,  fired  ten  times,  and  delivered  to  the  government  in- 
spector. Formerly,  they  used  to  cram  the  great  guns  full 
of  powder,  and  fire  them  off,  thus  overloaded,  until  they 
were  on  the  point  of  bursting,  and  would  burst  with  only  an 
ordinary  charge.  This  error  has  been  avoided  since  the 
Princeton  gun  killed  a  secretary  of  state,  and  came  near 
destroying  the  whole  government. 

From  seeing  one  of  these  enormous  guns  cast,  the  visitoi 
at  Pittsburg  may  go,  if  he  chooses,  to  an  establishment 
where  they  make  tacks  so  minute  that  it  takes  a  thousand  of 
them  to  weigh  an  ounce.  We  went  thither,  having  long  had 
an  imbecile  curiosity  to  know  how  nails  and  tacks  are  made. 


212  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

How  startling  the  contrast  between  the  slow  movements,  and 
tranquil,  gloomy  vastness  of  the  cannon  foundry,  and  the 
animation  of  the  great  rattling,  roaring,  crowded  nail-works 
of  Chess,  Smyth,  &  Co.,  all  glaring  and  flashing  with  light, 
with  many  tall  chimneys  pouring  out  black  smoke  and  red 
blaze  into  the  December  evening !  Noise  ?  There  is  only 
one  place  in  this  world  as  noisy  as  a  large  nail-factory  in  full 
operation,  and  that  is  under  the  sheet  at  Niagara  Falls.  How 
should  it  be  otherwise,  when  the  factory  is  making  many 
thousand  nails  a  minute,  and  when  every  single  nail,  spike, 
brad,  and  tack  is  cut  from  a  strip  of  cold  iron,  and  headed 
by  a  blow  upon  cold  iron?  We  saw  one  machine  there 
-pouring  out  shoemakers'  brads  at  the  rate  of  three  thousand 
a  minute,  and  it  required  the  attendance  of  only  one  boy. 
They  came  rattling  down  a  tin  gutter  as  fast  as  meal  comes 
from  a  mill.  But  to  see  this  wonderful  machine  astonishes 
the  stranger  less  than  to  see  a  girl  in  the  packing-room  who 
weighs  and  packs  two  thousand  papers  of  tacks  in  nine 
hours. 

Nails  are  made  thus:  1.  Pig-iron  is  rolled  into  long 
bars  ;  2.  These  long  bars  are  cut  into  lengths  of  one  foot; 
3.  These  lengths  are  piled  into  heaps  of  nine;  4.  These 
heaps  of  nine  are  rolled  into  sheets  as  thick  as  the  nail  is  to 
be ,  5.  Those  sheets  are  cut  into  strips  a  little  wider  than 
the  nail  is  to  be  long;  6.  These  strips  are  cut  into  nails  by 
the  nailing-machine,  which  also  heads  the  nails  as  they  fall. 
A.  man  holds  the  strip  of  iron  in  the  machine's  jaws,  which 
instantly  bite  off  a  nail.  But  a  nail  tapers  off  from  the  head 
to  the  point,  and  consequently  the  strip  has  to  be  turned  over 
before  the  machine  can  be  allowed  to  bite  again.  But  for 
this  necessity  of  turning  the  strip,  men  could  be  dispensed 
with.  Imagine  a  room  four  times  as  large  as  the  interior 
of  Trinity  Church,  with  rows  of  nailing-machines  as  close 


SOME    OF    THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURGH  213 

together  as  sewing-machines  in  a  clothing  factory,  and  all  on 
the  full  champ,  —  some  biting  off  spikes  three  to  a  pound, 
and  others  nipping  tacks  at  the  rate  of  thousands  a  minute. 

This  most  interesting  establishment  employs  two  hundred 
and  ten  men,  forty  boys,  and  twenty-five  girls ;  consumes 
one  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  iron  in  a  week ;  makes  two 
hundred  kinds  of  nails,  tacks,  and  brads ;  makes  in  a  week 
two  thousand  four  hundred  kegs  of  nails,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  boxes  of  tacks,  one  hundred  pounds  to  a  box,  and  one 
hundred  boxes  of  brads. 

The  crowning  glory  of  Pittsburg  is  the  "American  Iron- 
Works  "  of  Messrs.  Jones  and  Laughlins.  This  establish- 
ment, which  employs  twenty-five  hundred  men,  which  has  a 
coal-mine  at  its  back  door  and  an  iron-mine  on  Lake  Superior, 
which  makes  almost  every  large  and  difficult  iron  thing  the 
country  requires,  which  usually  has  "on  hand"  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars'  worth  of  finished  work,  is  such  a  world 
of  wonder,  that  this  whole  volume  would  not  contain  an 
adequate  account  of  it.  Here  are  machines  ponderous  and 
exact  ?  here  are  a  thousand  ingenuities ;  here  is  the  net 
result  of  all  that  man  has  done  in  iron  masses  during  the 
whole  period  of  his  residence  upon  earth.  What  should  there 
be  here,  too,  but  a  specimen  of  what  man  can  undo  in  iron, 
in  the  form  of  a  great  heap  of  rusty  twisted  rails  from 
Georgia,  so  completely  spoiled  by  General  Sherman's  troops 
that  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  with  them  but  sell  them 
for  old  iron  1  It  is  at  these  works  alone  that  iron  is  subjected 
to  the  new  process  called  "cold-rolling."  Every  reader  has 
stood  by  a  steam-engine,  and  admired  the  perfect  roundness, 
the  silvery  brightness,  and  the  irresistible  thrust  of  the 
piston-rod.  A  piston-rod  is  usually  made  thus.  A  huge, 
jagged  mass  of  white-hot  iron,  just  on  the  point  of  fusion,  is 
fished  out  of  the  furnace,  and  is  swung  across  the  foundry  to 


214  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPEISE. 

the  rolling-machine,  which  rolls  it  into  a  long  round  roll,  a 
little  thicker  than  the  piston-rod  is  to  be.  It  is  next  put  into 
a  turning  lathe,  where  it  is  turned  and  polished  to  the  size 
required,  —  a  long  and  costly  process.  That  is  the  usual 
way.  The  "cold-rolling"  process  is  this  :  the  long,  round 
roll,  a  little  thicker  than  this  piston-rod  is  to  be,  is  passed 
cold  through  another  rolling-mill  of  immense  power,  and 
simply  squeezed  to  the  size  required.  Advantages  :  1.  The 
process  is  quicker  and  cheaper ;  2 .  The  rod  issues  from  the 
mill  as  brilliantly  polished  as  the  plate  on  a  queen's  table ; 
3.  The  pressure  so  increases  the  density  of  the  iron,  that 
the  rod  is  about  two  and  a  half  times  stronger  than  those 
made  in  the  old  way.  Iron  plates  and  bars  are  made  on  the 
same  principle. 

We  cannot  linger  among  these  wondrous  "  works  "  of  the 
strong  men  of  Pittsburg.  The  men  themselves  have  claims 
upon  our  notice. 

The  masters  of  Pittsburg  are  mostly  of  the  Scotch-Irish 
race,  Presbyterians,  keen  and  steady  in  the  prosecution  of 
their  affairs,  indifferent  to  pleasure,  singularly  devoid  of  the 
usual  vanities  and  ostentations,  proud  to  possess  a  solid  and 
spacious  factory,  and  to  live  in  an  insignificant  house.  There 
are  no  men  of  leisure  in  the  town.  Mr.  George  H.  Thurs- 
ton,  President  of  the  Pacific  and  Atlantic  Telegraph  Com- 
pany, —  who,  from  having  superintended  the  preparation  of 
the  Directory  for  many  years,  as  well  as  from  his  very  great 
interest  in  all  that  relates  to  the  prosperity  and  glory  of 
Pittsburg,  knows  the  town  better  than  any  other  person  that 
ever  lived  in  it,  —  assured  us  positively  that  there  were  not, 
in  all  the  region  which  we  call  Pittsburg,  three  persons  out 
of  business  who  were  physically  capable  of  conducting  busi- 
ness. The  old  men  never  think  of  "  retiring,"  nor  is  there 
anything  for  them  to  retire  to.  The  family  tie  being  pow- 


SOME    OF    THE    WONDERS    OF   PITTSBURGH  215 

erful  in  this  race,  the  great  firms  are  usually  composed  of 
near  relatives,  and  generally  survive  the  generation  that 
founded  them.  Thus,  the  Fort  Pitt  Foundry,  founded  in 
1803,  has  cast  cannon  for  every  war  in  which  the  United 
States  has  been  engaged,  and  is  now  conducted  by  the 
worthy  nephews  of  the  Charles  Knap  who  made  the  estab- 
lishment what  it  is.  In  the  American  Iron- Works,  we 
find  six  partners,  namely,  the  two  chiefs,  Messrs.  Jones  and 
Laughlin,  two  sons  of  one  of  these  chiefs,  and  two  brothers 
of  the  other, — a  nice  family  party.  Hence,  there  are  few 
hired  clerks  in  Pittsburg.  These  mighty  "  works "  are 
managed  with  the  minimum  of  expense.  The  visitor  gen- 
erally finds  "  the  old  man  "  bustling  about  the  works  in  his 
cap  and  fustian  jacket ;  while  perhaps  his  eldest  son  is  keep- 
ing the  books,  a  son-in-law  or  nephew  is  making  up  the 
wages  accounts,  and  a  younger  son  is  in  the  warehouse. 

The  conservative  elements  here  are  powerful,  as  they  are 
in  all  communities  in  which  families  endure.  Until  very 
recently,  in  Pittsburg,  it  would  have  boded  ill  for  a  man  to 
build  a  handsome  house  a  few  miles  out  of  the  smoke;  and 
to  this  day  it  is  said  that  a  Pittsburg  man  of  business  who 
should  publish  a  poem  would  find  his  "  paper "  doubted  at 
the  bank.  "A  good  man,  sir,  but  not  practical."  These 
excellent  and  strenuous  men  accuse  themselves  vehemently 
of  a  want  of  public  spirit,  and  it  is  evident  the  charge  is 
just.  For  the  last  few  years,  business  has  rushed  in  upon 
them  like  a  torrent ;  and  all  their  force  having  been  expended 
in  doing  this  business,  they  now  awake  to  the  fact  that  a 
Great  City  is  upon  their  hands,  to  be  consolidated,  organ- 
ized, paved,  policed,  parked,  purified,  and  adornecl.  They 
now  feel  that  some  of  those  iron  kings,  those  great  men  of 
glass,  oil,  coal,  salt,  and  clay,  must  leave  business  to  their 
sons  and  nephews,  and  take  hold  of  Pittsburg. 

14 


216  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  masters  work  too  hard.  We  wish  we  had  room  to 
tell  the  story  of  one  of  the  great  brains  of  this  place,  just  as 
we  heard  him  tell  it.  We  can  but  indicate  the  outline. 

His  own  master  at  sixteen.  At  twenty-eight,  one  of  a 
firm  about  to  found  new  iron-works.  Capital,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  Plunged  into  a  business  of  a 
million  per  annum.  Ticklish  work  this  !  A  slight  miscal- 
culation in  estimating  for  a  contract,  an  unexpected  rise  in 
the  price  of  something,  and  away  goes  the  small  capital,  and 
honor  with  it.  Hence  he  worked  eighteen  hours  a  day 
for  fourteen  years.  Called  at  six  every  morning  but  Sun- 
day. At  warehouse  in  Pittsburg  till  nine.  At  the  works 
until  two.  At  the  mine  until  dark.  Home  to  tea,  and 
to  lovely  family,  well  beloved ;  but  too  tired  and  dull 
to  enjoy  or  be  enjoyed.  At  seven,  would  "  drag  "  round  to 
the  office,  and  there  write  or  w  estimate  "  till  twelve.  Then 
home  to  bed,  and  instantly  to  sleep.  Felt  always  as  if  play- 
ing a  great,  splendid,  complicated  Game,  upon  which  fortune 
and  honor  both  were  staked,  but  especially  honor.  Two 
kinds  of  honor,  —  honor  as  a  man  of  business,  honor  as  a 
man  of  ability.  The  game  was  won !  Capital  increased 
from  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  to  three  million  dol- 
lars. Finest,  grandest  iron-works  in  America.  Glorious 
scene  of  triumphant  ingenuity.  Three  hundred  brick  cot- 
tages owned  by  the  firm,  all  tenanted  by  their  own  work- 
men. Paper,  gilt-edged. 

But  one  night,  two  years  ago,  instead  of  dropping  asleep 
as  soon  as  his  head  touched  the  pillow,  this  successful  man 
could  not  go  to  sleep  for  hours,  and  then  slept  ill.  Many  such 
nights  followed.  One  day,  when  he  was  abstrusely  calculat- 
ing, his  mind  suddenly  lost  its  power ;  he  could  not  keep 
his  attention  upon  his  figures,  nor  make  any  safe  progress  in 
his  work.  Alarmed,  he  went  to  the  doctor,  who  told  him, 


SOME    OF   THE   WONDERS   OF   PITTSBURG.  217 

to  his  great  astonishment,  that  he  had  been  working  too 
hard,  and  must  rest.  He  took  this  advice  and  a  short  jour- 
ney ;  but  soon  after,  resuming  his  ordinary  labors,  his  brain 
again  suddenly  lost  its  power.  It  was  about  eleven  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  he  tried  to  think  of  something  to  do 
that  would  amuse  without  fatiguing  his  mind.  He  could 
think  of  nothing  but  the  dentist;  so  to  the  dentist's  he  went, 
hoping  to  enjoy  a  little  anguish  till  dinner-time.  But  this 
recreation  was  denied  him,  for,  while  waiting  in  the  den- 
tist's parlor,  he' fainted  dead  away.  He  was  now  seriously 
alarmed,  and  for  the  first  time  began  to  consider  his  case 
with  the  intelligence  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of  bestowing 
upon  iron  alone.  He  lived  thenceforth  as  became  a  man,  a 
husband,  and  a  father ;  worked  ten  hours  a  day,  and  spent 
every  evening  in  playing  with  his  children,  and  conversing 
with  his  wife  and  their  friends.  Thanks  to  a  wonderful  con- 
stitution, it  was  not  too  late.  He  recovered  his  health,  and 
is  now  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  life. 

It  is  such  as  he  who  should  leave  iron  to  the  youngsters, 
and  amuse  themselves  for  the  rest  of  their  lives  in  making 
Pittsburg  metropolitan.  Such  a  thought  does  not,  it  is  said, 
ever  cross  their  minds.  When  we  suggested  it  to  a  son  of 
Pittsburg,  and  mentioned  an  individual  who  could  soon  put 

the  city  in  order,  the  reply  was  :  "  If  Mr. should  sell 

out  for  three  millions,  he  would  never  be  easy  till  he  had 
built  a  new  factory  for  seven  millions,  and  then  give  himself 
no  rest  till  he  had  paid  off  the  four  millions  of  debt." 

This  is  mania.  There  will  be,  perhaps,  asylums  for  this 
class  of  patients  some  day. 

The  workmen,  —  what  of  them?  As  the  stranger  goes 
about  among  the  "works,"  and  sees  men  performing  labors 
so  severe  that  they  have  to  stop,  now  and  then,  in  summer, 
take  off  their  boots,  and  pour  the  perspiration  out  of  them, 


218  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

he  is  apt  to  become  a  fanatical  free-trader  on  the  spot.  He 
says  to  himself:  "  If  there  is  any  foreign  country  that  is 
willing  to  do  all  this  hideous  work  for  us  at  a  rate  of  com- 
pensation that  we  can  afford  to  pay,  why  should  not  that 
foreign  country  be  allowed  to  do  it,  so  that  these  American 
citizens  could  turn  their  attention  to  something  more  agree- 
able?" But,  then,  if  the  work  is  terrific,  the  wages  are 
extraordinary.  Some  of  these  "  puddlers,"  rollers,  nailers, 
modellers,  and  others  of  the  aristocracy  of  the  mills,  receive 
from  ten  to  twenty -five  dollars  a  day ;  and  the  average 
wages  of  skilled  labor  do  not  probably  average  below  five 
dollars  a  day.  The  necessaries  of  life  are  cheaper  here  than 
in  any  other  large  city,  East  or  West.  For  several  years 
past,  too,  the  men  have  generally  been  the  masters,  because 
there  has  been  work  offering  beyond  the  capacity  of  the 
town  to  execute. 

But  all  who  have  power  abuse  it,  more  or  less.  Consid- 
ering that  during  the  greater  part  of  man's  existence  on 
earth,  working  men  have  been  oppressed,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  they  should  avail  themselves  of  a  passing  opportu- 
nity to  try  a  little  oppression  upon  others.  All  the  trades 
here  have  guilds,  or  societies,  for  protection  against  the 
capitalists,  who  also  combine  to  resist  the  demands  of  the 
workmen;  What  both  these  combinations  need,  to  keep 
their  intercourse  dignified  and  friendly,  —  to  prevent  that 
fierce  and  vulgar  hostility  which  rages  in  England  between 
employers  and  men,  —  is  knowledge,  the  great  want  of  all 
men  everywhere  !  But  the  working  men  especially  need  it . 
Every  one  of  those  working  men's  societies  should  have  a 
little  library  of  the  best  works  upon  political  economy.  If 
only  one  man  in  the  whole  guild  had  the  spirit  to  study 
them,  that  one  man  might,  at  a  critical  time,  prevent  a 
whole  trade  from  running  full  tilt,  blindly,  against  a  law  of 


SOME    OF   THE   WONDEKS    OF   PITTSBURG.  219 

nature.  But  more  than  one  man  would  study  them,  for 
there  are  evidently  a  great  number  of  excellent  heads  among 
the  men  of  the  mills.  One  of  the  best  little  papers  we  ever 
read  is  one  conducted  by  and  for  them  at  Pittsburg,  called 
the  "  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Advocate,"  and  bearing  the 
excellent  motto,  "Union  is  strength, — KNOWLEDGE  is 
power." 

We  saw  no  indication  at  Pittsburg  of  the  infernal  feeling 
that  appears  to  exist  in  Sheffield  and  Birmingham  between 
employers  and  employed.  The  men  laugh  a  good  deal  at 
the  alleged  narrowness  of  some  of  the  capitalists  of  the 
town.  A  writer  in  the  little  paper  just  mentioned  says : 
"  Some  one  started  the  idea  of  making  a  public  park  on  the 
northern  face  of  Grant's  Hill ;  but  the  public  beneficence  of 
the  project  was  so  un-Pittsburg-like,  that  the  projector 
found  he  was  either  behind  or  in  advance  of  the  age  so  far. 
A  soldiers'  monument  was  next  spoken  of,  but  several  of 
our  wealthiest  men  (who  had  become  so  by  the  war)  could 
only  give  .  two  or  three  dollars  apiece,  and  it  has  so  far 
failed."  Again :  "  It  has  become  the  prevailing  opinion 
that  landlords  are  not  among  our  most  benevolent  citi- 
zens ;  and  it  is  quite  probable  that  public  opinion  does 
them  injustice,  since  they  are  to  be  found  among  the  most 
strict  professors  of  religion,  occupying  front  pews  in 
church,  carrying  round  the  money-basket  for  collections, 
leading  the  way  to  the  sacrament,  inviting  the  minister 
to  tea,  and  reproving  the  outbursts  of  hilarious  youth  on 
all  occasions.  None  of  the  Pittsburg  landlords  owned 
the  houses  where  Christ  travelled,  and  e  had  not  where 
to  lay  his  head.'  But  if  he  should  ever  happen  to  be 
in  Pittsburg,  —  which  is  doubtful, — he  would  find  that 
it  would  require  an  enormous  amount  of  *  scrip  in  his 
purse.' " 


220  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

It  is  only  such  harmless  fun  as  this  that  the  grim}'  man  of 
the  furnace  pokes  at  the  slightly  less  grimy  man  of  the 
counting-room.  But  if  these  passages  show  the  good-humor 
of  the  men,  how  clearly  they  reveal  their  need  of  a  course 
of  political  economy  !  All  talk  of  that  kind  about  the  land- 
lords is  ignorance,  —  pure  ignorance.  An  American  me- 
chanic should  be  above  it.  Is  not  the  law  of  nature  which 
impels  the  working  man  to  get  as  much  as  he  can  for  his 
labor  a  universal  law  ? 

Here,  as  everywhere,  we  see  the  process  going  on  by 
which  from  the  mass  of  men  the  few  are  selected  whom 
nature  has  fitted  to  be  masters.  Many  of  the  men  who  get 
from  fifty  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  week  waste  their 
money  and  themselves.  Some  men  drink  twenty  glasses  of 
beer  per  day  the  year  round.  About  one  third  of  the  whole 
number  of  men  save  money,  and  live  cleanly  and  sensibly ; 
and  it  is  from  this  third  that  the  future  foremen  and  propri- 
etors will  be  gradually  sifted  out. 

Nothing  in  the  life  of  Pittsburg  is  more  striking  to  a 
visitor  than  the  completeness  of  the  cessation  from  labor  at 
the  close  of  the  week.  The  Scotch-Irish  race  are  strict 
Sabbatarians,  and  nothing  goes  on  in  Pittsburg  on  Sundays 
which  it  is  possible  to  stop.  Of  all  those  five  hundred  tall 
chimneys,  there  will  not  usually  be  more  than  two  that 
smoke  on  Sundays.  During  the  week  the  town  gets  under 
such  a  headway  of  industry,  that  it  takes  all  Saturday  after- 
noon for  it  to  come  to  a  stand.  The  regular  work  ceases  at 
noon,  but  the  afternoon  is  spent  in  paying  wages,  grinding 
tools,  cleaning  up,  making  repairs,  and  getting  ready  for  a 
fair  start  on  Monday  morning.  By  seven  in  the  evening, 
the  principal  streets  of  Pittsburg  are  densely  filled  with 
washed  men.  They  stroll  about ;  they  stand  conversing  in 
groups ;  they  gather,  in  thick  semicircles,  about  every 


SOME    OF   THE    WONDERS   OF   PITTSBURG.  221 

shop- window  that  has  a  picture  in  it,  or  any  bright  or 
curious  object ;  especially  do  they  haunt  the  news-stands, 
which  provide  a  free  picture-gallery  for  them,  of  Illustrated 
News,  Comic  Monthlies,  and  Funny  Fellows.  The  men 
are  so  numerous,  that  the  whole  width  of  some  of  the  streets 
is  filled  with  them ;  and  there  is  not  a  woman  to  be  seen ! 
Not  a  single  petticoat  among  thousands  of  other  coats  !  ,  Yet 
no  crowd  could  be  more  orderly  and  quiet.  These  men, 
after  a  week  of  intense  monotony,  —  gazing  at  dull  objects, 
and  doing  the  same  dull  act  ten  hours  a  day,  —  how  hungry 
they  seemed  for  some  brightness  to  flash  into  their  lives  ! 
How  we  longed  to  usher  them  all  into  some  gorgeous  scene, 
and  give  them  a  banquet  of  splendors  !  Mere  brilliancy  of 
color  and  light  is  transport,  we  should  suppose,  to  a  man 
who  has  been  making  nails  or  digging  coal  from  Monday 
morning  until  Saturday  noon. 

We  need  not  say  that  every  theatre  and  show  in  Pitts- 
burg  is  crammed  on  Saturday  night.  By  putting  forth  the 
greatest  efforts,  \ve  did  manage  to  get  into  one  of  the 
theatres,  into  which  dense  masses  of  men  were  crowding. 
Not  a  woman  was  present.  The  place  was  packed  with 
brawny  men  and  noisy  boys,  all  washed,  all  well-disposed, 
though  half  mad  with  joyous  excitement.  On  the  walls 
were  posted  such  admonitions  as  these :  "  Hats  off,"  "  No 
hallooing  or  whistling  allowed,"  "Applaud  with  your 
hands,"  "  Order  must  be  observed,"  "No  walk  around  by 
performers  in  white  faces  allowed."  What  the  last  of  these 
announcements  may  mean  we  cannot  tell ;  but,  with  regard 
to  the  rest,  we  can  say  that  the  audience  paid  no  heed  to 
them  whatever.  The  performances  consisted  of  farces  raised 
to  the  fiftieth  power,  comic  songs,  and  legs.  Never  have 
we  seen  an  audience  so  amusable.  It  often  happened,  dur- 
ing the  performance  of  a  farce,  that  the  people  would  keep 


222  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

up  such  a  roar  of  laughter,  that  for  many  seconds  at  a 
time  not  a  word  could  be  heard  from  the  stage.  We  dis- 
covered here,  what  the  play-bills  mean  when  they  speak 
of  w  roaring  farces,"  and  of  farces  that  are  w  screaming." 

The  reader  will  say,  perhaps,  that  this  is  a  poor  ending  to 
a  week  of  hard  labor.  Perhaps  it  is.  But  the  natural  kings 
of  Pittsburg  do  not  provide  anything  better,  nor  heartily 
encourage  the  production  of  anything  better.  These  poor 
hungry  fellows  of  the  dark  mine  and  the  dim  foundry  want 
some  change,  some  pleasure,  some  brilliancy.  They  can 
get  this  for  twenty-five  cents /and  it  is  better  than  nothing. 
There  are  two  other  theatres  in  the  town,  where  perform- 
ances of  a  more  "  legitimate  "  character  are  given ;  and  t 
considering  the  little  aid  they  derive  from  those  who  could 
best  afford  to  attend  them,  they  are  respectable. 

Nine  miles  and  three  eighths  from  Pittsburg,  on  the  shores 
of  the  Monongahela,  is  the  pleasant  and  growing  village 
called  "  Braddock's  Field."  Its  principal  streets  are  "  Wash- 
ington," "Bradclock,"  "Halkett,"  "Frazer,"  "Beaujean," 
"Aliquippa."  We  need  not  say  why  this  village  is  so 
called,  nor  why  these  names  were  given  to  its  streets.  The 
ford  by  which  the  fated  army  crossed  the  river  was  used  as 
a  ford  until  a  few  years  ago,  when  the  river  was  dammed  to 
improve  the  navigation.  The  ancient  Indian  trail  which  led 
up  from  the  ford  is  still  a  lane,  fenced  and  used.  The  two 
ravines  in  which  the  Indians  lay  in  ambush  are  visible. 
They  are  not  more  than  three  or  four  feet  below  the  general 
level,  the  ambush  having  been  afforded  by  a.  close  growth 
of  hazel-bushes  that  long  ago  disappeared.  There  are 
several  trees  standing  on  the  field  that  must  m  have  been  of 
good  size  when  the  defeat  occurred ;  the  largest  is  an  ancient 
oak,  that  stands  where  the  bullets  must  have  flown  thickest, 
and  from  which  many  have  been  picked  by  the  prying 


SOME    OF   THE    VONDEKS    OF   PITTSBURG.  223 

knives  of  visitors.  Near  it  is  a  rough  enclosure  of  common 
rails,  such  as  farmers  make  for  a  hay-stack,  within  which 
are  buried  a  considerable  number  of  human  bones,  that 
were  dug  up  when  the  track  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
was  laid  across  the  scene  of  the  battle.  Interesting  relics 
of  the  encounter  are  still  occasionally  found.  Colonel 
Edward  J.  Allen,  whose  agreeable  and  hospitable  house 
stands  upon  the  battle-field,  close  to  the  place  of  the  greatest 
slaughter,  informed  us  that  his  garden  has  never  yet  been 
dug  up  in  the  spring  without  the  exposure  of  something  of 
the  kind,  an  arrow-head,  a  bullet,  or  even  a  bayonet.  A 
sword  with  a  name  engraved  upon  it,  has  been  recently  found 
in  the  neighborhood. 

How  changed  this  scene  in  a  hundred  and  twelve  years  ! 
The  bluff  beneath  which  those  seven  hundred  men  laid  down 
their  lives  is  pierced  with  holes,  near  the  summit,  out  of 
which  mules  emerge,  drawing  car-loads  of  glistening  coal. 
On  the  opposite  bank,  rows  of  the  blazing  chimneys  of 
coke-ovens  glare  through  the  night.  A  beautiful  village, 
noisy  with  the  school-children  at  play,  covers  a  great  part 
of  the  field.  Two  railroads  cross  it,  over  which  one  hundred 
and  twenty  trains  pass  every  twenty-four  hours  1 


ORIGIN  OF  THE 

COTTON -WEAVING  MACHINERY. 


ONE  evening,  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  Dr.  Franklin 
and  Dr.  Priestley  were  conversing  at  the  Eoyal  Society  Club 
in  London,  upon  the  progress  of  the  arts  and  sciences.  The 
question  arose  at  length,  what  was  the  most  desirable  inven- 
tion that  remained  to  be  made ;  upon  which  Dr.  Franklin 
expressed  himself  thus  :  w  A  machine  capable  of  spinning 
two  threads  at  the  same  time." 

The  cotton  manufacture,  introduced  into  England  about 
the  year  1620,  was  then  fast  rising  into  importance.  We 
read  in  an  English  book,  published  in  1641,  the  following 
interesting  passage :  — 

"  The  town  of  Manchester  buys  linen  yarn  from  the  Irish  in 
great  quantity,  and  weaving  it,  returns  again  the  same  in  linen  into 
Ireland  to  sell.  Neither  does  her  industry  rest  here ;  for  they  buy 
cotton  wool  in  London  that  comes  from  Cyprus  and  Smyrna,  and 
work  the  same  into  fustians,  vermilions,  and  dimities,  which  they 
return  to  London,  where  they  are  sold,  and  from  thence  not  seldom 
are  sent  into  such  foreign  parts,  where  the  first  material  may  be 
more  easily  had  for  that  manufacture." 

At  this  time,  and  for  more  than  a  century  after,  the  weaver 
bought  his  own  yarn,  took  it  home  to  his  cottage,  and  wove 
it  into  cloth ;  so  that  each  weaver's  house  was  a  little  factory. 
He  bought  the  yarn  for  the  warp  ;  the  wool  for  the  woof  was 
carded  and  spun  by  his  wife  and  daughters,  while  the  weav- 


226  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ing  was  performed  by  himself  and  sons.  It  was  long  before 
any  attempt  was  made  in  England  to  make  cloth  wholly  of 
cotton,  although  fabrics  of  this  nature  had  been  known  in 
India  for  centuries,  and  were  beginning  to  be  imported  into 
England  in  considerable  quantities  before  the  year  1700. 

It  is  curious  to  notice  how  uniformly  every  great  step  in 
the  progress  of  man  has  been  dreaded  and  opposed.  Dr. 
Ure  says :  — 

"  The  silk  and  woollen  weavers  of  England  manifested  the  keen- 
est hostility  to  the  use  of  printed  calicoes,  whether  brought  from 
the  east  or  made  at  home.  In  the  year  1680  they  mobbed  the  India 
House,  in  revenge  for  some  large  importations  then  made  of  the 
chintzes  of  Malabar.  They  next  induced  the  government,  by  inces- 
sant clamors,  to  exclude  altogether  the  beautiful  robes  of  Calicut 
from  the  English  market.  But  the  printed  goods  found  their  way 
into  the  country  in  spite  of  excessive  penalties  annexed  to  smug- 
gling, and  raised  a  new  alarm  among  the  manufacturing  population. 
The  sapient  legislators  of  that  day,  intimidated  by  the  London 
mob,  enacted,  in  1720,  an  absurd  law  prohibiting  the  wearing  of  all 
printed  calicoes  whatsoever,  either  of  foreign  or  domestic  origin  ! 
This  disgraceful  enactment,  worthy  of  Cairo  or  Algiers,  proved  not 
only  a  death-blow  to  rising  industry,  but  prevented  the  ladies  from 
attiring  themselves  in  the  becoming  drapery  of  Hindostan." 

This  law,  it  appears,  remained  in  force  for  ten  years,  and 
was  then  replaced  by  an  act  somewhat  less  oppressive.  Peo- 
ple were  allowed  to  make  what  was  styled  "  British  calicoes," 
provided  the  warp  was  made  of  linen,  and  only  the  woof  of 
cotton ;  and  provided,  also,  that  for  every  yard  of  such  cal- 
ico the  maker  should  pay  a  duty  of  sixpence  to  the  govern- 
ment. Even  while  staggering  under  this  burden,  the  cotton 
manufacture  made  some  progress ;  so  that  more  than  fifty 
thousand  pieces  of  mixed  fabrics  were  made  in  England  in 
the  year  1750. 


ORIGIN   OF   THE    COTTON- WEAVING   MACHINERY.         227 

This  restrictive  legislation,  as  Dr.  Ure  remarks,  grew  out 
of  the  ignorance  and  terror  of  the*  weavers  themselves.  A 
curious  anecdote  has  been  related,  which  most  strikingly 
illustrates  the  fact.  A  man  was  about  to  be  executed  at 
Cork  for  stealing.  On  the  appointed  day,  the  weavers,  who 
were  short  of  work,  and  attributed  the  hard  times  to  cotton, 
gathered  about  the  gallows,  and  dressed  both  the  criminal 
and  the  executioner  in  cotton  cloth,  to  mark  their  contempt 
and  abhorrence  of  it,  and  to  make  the  wearing  of  it  disgrace- 
ful. The  criminal,  sympathizing  with  the  object,  delivered 
the  following  a'ddress  just  before  being  turned  off :  — 

"  Give  ear,  oh  good  people,  to  the  words  of  a  dying  sinner.  I 
confess  I  have  been  guilty  of  what  necessity  compelled  me  to  com- 
mit ;  which  starving  condition  I  was  in,  I  am  well  assured,  was 
occasioned  by  the  scarcity  of  money,  that  has  proceeded  from  the 
great  discouragement  of  our  woollen  manufactures.  Therefore,  good 
Christians,  consider  that,  if  you  go  on  to  suppress  your  own  goods 
by  wearing  such  cottons  as  I  am  now  clothed  in,  you  will  bring 
your  country  into  misery  which  will  consequently  swarm  with  such 
unhappy  malefactors  as  your  present  object  is,  and  the  blood  of 
every  miserable  felon  that  will  hang  after  this  warning,  will  lay  at 
your  door." 

Thus  has  it  ever  been.  Man  has  always  hated  and  warred 
against  his  best  benefactors,  and  denounced  in  one  age  what 
he  has  honored  in  the  next.  Wonderful  to  relate,  it  was  not 
until  the  year  1774,  that  the  law  was  repealed  which  required 
the  warp  of  calico  to  be  made  of  linen,  and  for  many  years 
after  that  a  duty  of  threepence  per  yard  was  exacted.  Nor 
are  we  who  live  in  a  more  enlightened  day  exempt  from  sim- 
ilar folly.  I  have  heard  lately  arguments  in  favor  of  a  pro- 
tective tariff  and  against  an  international  copyright,  which 
were  just  as  short-sighted  as  the  English  cotton  legislation 
of  the  last  century. 


22$  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

But  to  come  to  our  subject.  About  the  year  1760,  a 
change  was  introduced  into  the  cotton  manufacture,  which 
proved  to  be  of  importance  in  leading  to  the  great  inventions 
of  a  later  day.  The  Manchester  dealers,  instead  of  buying 
calicoes  and  other  fabrics  from  the  weavers,  now  began  to 
furnish  the  weavers  with  materials,  and  to  pay  a  certain 
price  for  doing  the  work.  They  gave  out  a  quantity  of  linen 
thread,  and  with  it  a  certain  proportion  of  cotton-wool,  which 
the  weaver  himself  had  to  convert  into  woof.  Now  arose 
the  difficulty  which  led  Dr.  Franklin  to  make  the  remark 
previously  quoted.  As  there  was  no  machine  in  existence 
for  spinning,  except  the  old-fashioned  spinning-wheel,  which 
spun  but  one  thread  at  a  time,  the  weavers  were  constantly 
troubled  to  get  their  cotton-wool  spun  fast  enough.  The 
business  was  self-limited.  Even  if  there  had  been  no 
restraining  laws,  the  cotton  manufacture  could  never  have 
attained  grand  proportions  unless  a  method  had  been  con- 
trived of  spinning  with  greater  rapidity. 

James  Hargreaves,  a  poor,  illiterate  weaver  of  Lancas- 
shire,  in  England,  was  the  man  who  began  those  improve- 
ments in  the  methods  of  spinning  which  have  made  England 
the  cotton  manufacturer  for  the  world.  While  Dr.  Franklin 
was  uttering  the  words  attributed  to  him,  James  Hargreaves, 
if  he  was  awake  at  the  moment,  was  probably  brooding  over 
the  same  subject.  Nothing  is  recorded  of  the  early  life  of 
this  man.  We  simply  know,  that  about  the  year  1762,  the 
weavers  of  Lancashire,  and  he  among  them,  were  sorely 
troubled  to  get  their  cotton- wool  spun  fast  enough,  and  that, 
being  a  man  of  an  inventive  turn,  he  began  to  meditate 
improvements. 

He  turned  his  attention,  first,  to  devising  a  more  rapid 
way  of  carding  cotton.  Before  his  time,  carding  was  done 
by  hand.  He  invented  a  mode  of  doing  the  work  which 


ORIGIN   OF    THE    COTTON-WEAVING    MACHINERY.          229 

enabled  the  carder  to  double  his  product,  and  to  do  it  with 
greater  ease.  This  contrivance,  however,  was  soon  super- 
seded by  the  well-known  carding-machine,  which  is  still  in 
use.  The  inventor  of  this  is  unknown.  It  is  known,  how- 
ever, that  one  of  the  first  persons  to  use  it  was  Sir  Kob- 
ert  Peel,  who  made  one  with  his  own  hands,  assisted  by 
Hargreaves ;  from  which  it  seems  reasonable  to  infer  that 
Hargreaves  was  the  inventor. 

Five  years  after,  Hargreaves  conceived  4he  idea  of  his 
celebrated  spinning-jenny,  which  was  suggested  to  him,  it  i« 
said,  by  seeing  a  spinning-wheel,  which  had  been  over- 
turned, continue  to  revolve  horizontally,  as  it  lay  on  the 
floor.  Being  but  slightly  acquainted  with  mechanics,  he  had 
great  difficulty  in  carrying  out  his  conception ;  but  he  suc- 
ceeded, at  length,  in  constructing  a  rude  machine  of  eight 
spindles,  turned  by  bands  from  a  horizontal  wheel.  Rude 
as  it  was,  it  answered  the  purpose,  and  enabled  the  spinner 
to  produce  eight  threads  at  once.  The  inventor  labored  dil- 
igently to  improve  it,  until,  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two, 
he  made  a  spinning-jenny  which  spun  eighty  threads  at  once. 
Dr.  Franklin  was  in  England  at  the  time,  and  I  presume  he 
duly  rejoiced  at  this  new  triumph  of  human  ingenuity. 

But  all  men  are  not  Franklins.  The  spinners  took  the 
alarm  I  A  mob  of  ignorant  and  anxious  men  burst  into 
James  Hargreaves'  house,  and  broke  his  machine  all  to 
pieces.  The  inventor  fled  to  Nottingham,  where  he  began 
forthwith  to  construct  another.  Soon  after  this  the  spinners 
of  Lancashire  rose  in  greater  numbers  than  before,  and 
scoured  the  country,  destroying  every  carding-machine  and 
spinning-machine  they  could  find.  In  the  large  town  of 
Nottingham,  however,  Hargreaves  was  safe  from  violence 
of  this  kind ;  but  there  an  event  soon  occurred  which,  though 
a  benefit  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  was  a  terrible  calamity  to 


230  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

him.  Richard  Arkwright  invented  the  spinning- frame  !  A 
mechanical  genius  like  Hargreaves  must  have  comprehended 
at  a  glance  all  the  merit  of  that  splendid  invention.  He 
must  have  seen  in  it  the  irresistible  rival  of  his  darling  spin- 
ning-jenny. The  spinning-frame  of  Arkwright,  which  per- 
forms the  whole  process  of  spinning  with  only  the  superin- 
tendence of  a  girl,  was  so  complete  a  conception,  that  it  is 
employed  to-day  in  all  the  cotton  factories  of  Christendom. 

Poor  Hargreaves,  it  seems,  never  recovered  the  blow. 
He  struggled  with  adverse  fortune  for  a  few  years,  and  then 
died  at  Nottingham  in  extreme  poverty. 

The  career  of  Arkwright,  on  the  contrary,  was  as  trium- 
phant as  it  was  peculiar.  This  great  inventor,  who  died  a 
knight  and  a  millionnaire,  kept  a  barber-shop  in  a  cellar  in 
the  town  of  Bolton,  Lancashire.  He  was  the  child  of  parents 
who  were  rich  in  nothing  but  children,  of  whom  they  had 
thirteen.  Richard,  the  youngest  child,  received  scarcely 
any  education,  but  was  apprenticed  at  an  early  age  to  a  bar- 
ber, and,  in  due  time,  established  himself  in  that  business  in 
the  cellar  just  mentioned. 

Tradition  reports  that  even  in  these  lowly  circumstances 
he  showed  some  enterprise  and  ingenuity,  and  cherished  a 
deep-rooted  desire  to  emerge  from  his  cellar  to  a  position 
more  worthy  of  the  powers  which  he  was  conscious  of  pos- 
sessing. He  is  said  to  have  attracted  customers  by  putting 
a  sign  over  his  cellar  which  bore  these  words :  "  Come  to 
the  subterraneous  barber — he  shaves  for  a  penny."  This 
announcement  proved  so  attractive,  that  the  other  barbers 
were  compelled  to  reduce  their  price  to  the  same  standard  ; 
whereupon  Arkwright  exchanged  his  sign  for  one  still  more 
alluring  :  "  A  clean  shave  for  a  half-penny." 

This  dashing  measure,  tradition  reports,  brought  plenty 
of  customers,  but  reduced  the  profits  of  the  business  so  low 
that  he  resolved  to  abandon  it. 


ORIGIN    OF   THE   COTTON-WEAVING   MACHINERY.         231 

It  was  about  the  year  1762,  when  he  was  thirty  years  of 
&ge,  that  he  left  his  cellar  at  Bolton,  and  roamed  the  country, 
baying  up  human  hair  for  the  wig-makers,  travelling  from 
fair  to  fair,  and  purchasing  the  long  tresses  of  the  rustic 
girls  who  attended  them.  That  was  the  age  of  wigs.  Few 
persons  above  the  rank  of  a  laborer  ever  thought  of  present- 
ing themselves  to  view  in  their  own  hair,  and  some  of  the 
wigs  worn  were  of  great  size  and  considerable  weight.  Tho 
trade  of  wig-maker  was  one  of  the  principal  occupations  of 
the  country,  and  the  trade  in  human  hair  of  all  descriptions 
was  extensive  and  profitable.  Richard  Arkwright  now  began 
to  accumulate  property.  He  increased  his  gains  by  selling 
hair-dye,  and  by  dyeing  the  hair  which  he  purchased,  an  art 
in  which  he  acquired  great  skill. 

But  his  prosperity  was  of  brief  duration.  Although  he 
possessed  wonderful  mechanical  talent,  he  had  so  little  knowl- 
edge of  mechanical  principles,  that  he  took  it  into  his  head 
to  invent  a  perpetual  motion.  So  infatuated  was  he,  that  he 
spent  most  of  his  time,  and  soon  all  his  money,  in  making 
experiments.  Peace  fled  from  his  house,  and  plenty  from  his 
board.  His  wife  ve*ry  naturally  resented  this  infringement 
of  her  rights,  and,  on  one  unhappy  day,  overcome  with  sud- 
den anger,  she  broke  to  pieces  his  wheels  and  levers,  and  all 
the  apparatus  of  his  perpetual  motion.  Violence  never 
answers  a  good  purpose  between  people  who  live  together  in 
a  relation  so  intimate,  — neither  violence  of  word  nor  deed. 
Richard  Arkwright  could  not  forgive  this  cruel  stroke  ;  he 
separated  himself  from  his  wife,  and  never  lived  with  her 
again. 

Resuming  his  travels  about  Lancashire,  he  could  not  but 
become  aware  of  Hargreaves'  still  imperfect  invention  of  the 
spinning-jenny.  There  was  a  great  defect  in  this  ingenious 
machine  ;  for,  though  it  would  spin  eighty  threads  at  once, 

15 


232  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

those  threads  were  not  hard  and  strong  enough  to  serve  as  the 
warp  of  calico,  but  could  only  be  used  for  the  woof.  This 
was  of  no  great  consequence  at  the  time,  because  it  was 
unlawful  to  use  cotton  as  the  warp  of  a  fabric ;  but  pure  cot- 
ton cloth  never  could  have  been  made  by  machinery  unless  a 
mode  had  been  invented  of  spinning  cotton- wool  into  a  firm 
thread.  At  the  very  time  that  poor  Hargreaves  was  toiling 
to  improve  his  spinning-jenny,  Arkwright  fell  in  with  a 
clock-maker,  named  John  Kay,  who  had  rendered  some 
assistance  to  Hargreaves  in  constructing  his  machine,  and 
had  been  frequently  employed  in  making  and  mending 
weavers'  tools. 

Arkwright  consulted  John  Kay  respecting  his  perpetual 
motion,  and  it  is  highly  probable  that  Kay,  who  was  a  good 
mechanic,  diverted  him  from  further  pursuing  that  chimera, 
and  turned  his  mind  toward  the  invention  of  cotton-spin- 
ning machinery.  The  jenny  was  still  incomplete,  and  the 
weavers  still  found  extreme  difficulty  in  getting  cotton-wool 
fast  enough  to  keep  their  looms  in  motion.  While  his 
mind  was  intent  upon  this  purpose,  he  chanced  to  go  into  an 
iron  foundry,  where  he  saw  a  red-hot  bar  of  iron  drawn  out 
into  wire  by  being  made  to  pass  between  rollers.  The  idea 
of  his  great  invention  —  the  spinning-frame  —  flashed  upon 
his  mind.  The  essential  feature  of  his  machine  was  to  spin 
cotton  into  threads  by  causing  it  to  pass  between  grooved 
rollers,  —  as  the  reader  may  see  by  stepping  into  a  cotton 
factory  the  next  time  he  passes  one. 

Arkwright  now  sought  his  friend  Kay,  and  gave  himself 
wholly  up  to  the  construction  of  a  machine  upon  the  prin- 
ciple which  he  had  conceived.  Kay  made  such  a  machine 
for  him  under  his  directions ;  or,  to  speak  more  correctly, 
the  model  of  one  which  he  could  show  to  men  of  capital. 
In  the  construction  of  this  first  model,  he  reduced  himself 


ORIGIN   OF   THE    COTTON-WEAVING   MACHINERY.         233 

to  such  poverty,  that  his  clothes  were  all  in  rags  and  tat- 
ters, and  he  could  not  replace  them.  An  election  of  mem- 
bers of  parliament  occurring  about  this  time,  he  desired  to 
vote  for  General  Burgoyne,  who  was  destined  to  be  so 
famous  in  our  Revolution ;  but  his  clothes  were  in  a  con- 
dition so  woful  that  he  was  ashamed  to  appear  at  the  polls, 
and,  as  the  election  was  closely  contested,  some  of  General 
Burgoyne's  adherents  clubbed  together  and  bought  him  a 
suit  of  clothes  to  wear  when  he  cast  his  vote. 

Another  calamity  threatened  him.  Hargreaves'  spinning- 
jenny  had  just  been  torn  to  pieces  by  a  mob  in  another 
town,  and  the  weavers  about  Preston  were  beginning  to  eye 
with  suspicion  the  mysterious  operations  of  this  tattered 
barber,  and  his  assistant,  the  clock-maker.  In  the  nick  of 
time  Arkwright  packed  up  his  model  and  conveyed  it  safely 
to  the  large  town  of  Nottingham.  Confident  in  the  merit 
of  his  invention,  he  boldly  applied  to  a  firm  of  bankers  for 
money  to  assist  him  in  constructing  a  machine,  which  they 
agreed  to  furnish  on  condition  of  sharing  the  profits  of  the 
invention. 

But  these  worthy  bankers,  as  many  men  have  since 
done,  soon  grew  weary  of  spending  their  money  upon  a 
machine  which  was  slow  to  get  into  a  working  condition ; 
but  they  recommended  the  inventor  to  explain  his  ideas  to 
a  great  firm  of  stocking-weavers,  men  of  enterprise,  wealth, 
and  intelligence.  One  of  them,  Jedediah  Strutt,  was  him- 
self an  inventor,  having  but  recently  contrived  and  patented 
a  highly  ingenious  and  successful  machine  for  making  stock- 
ings. Mr.  Strutt  had  scarcely  seen  Arkwright's  models, 
before  he  comprehended  the  inestimable  value  of  the  inven- 
tion. A  partnership  was  promptly  formed  with  the  inge- 
nious barber,  and  the  invention  never  again  stood  still  for 
lack  of  money. 


234  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  patent  for  the  spinning-frame  was  taken  out  in  1769, 
the  very  year  in  which  James  Watt  patented  his  improved 
steam-engine,  which  was  to  keep  this  spinning-frame  in 
motion.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  that  Eichard  Arkwright  is 
styled  in  the  letters-patent  a  "clock-maker,"  —  possibly 
because  he  had  not  the  courage  to  write  himself  down 
a  barber. 

The  patent  being  secured,  Arkwright  erected  his  first 
mill,  the  power  of  which  was  supplied  by  horses.  Horses 
proving  too  expensive,  he  built  a  larger  mill  in  an  adjacent 
county,  the  machinery  of  which  was  moved  by  water  power. 
He  now  proceeded  to  create  the  system  of  cotton  manufac- 
ture which  has  ever  since  prevailed,  and  to  improve  every 
part  of  the  machinery  employed  in  the  business.  He  per- 
formed such  a  twenty  years'  work  as  few  men  have  ever 
done  in  this  world.  From  four  in  the  morning  until  nine 
at  night,  he  was  ever  at  work,  inventing,  organizing,  creat- 
ing, improving.  When  compelled  to  travel,  he  rode  in  a 
post-chaise,  drawn  by  four  .horses  ridden  at  their  utmost 
speed,  merely  to  save  time. 

Many  years  elapsed,  and  very  many  thousand  pounds  were 
spent,  before  the  enterprise  yielded  any  profit.  He  had 
all  the  usual  difficulties  to  contend  with,  and  some  that  were 
unusual.  When  the  value  of  his  spinning  -  frame  had 
become  apparent,  his  patent  was  infringed,  and,  to  main- 
tain his  right,  he  was  compelled  to  engage  in  a  series  of 
most  expensive  and  most  wearisome  lawsuits,  which  alone 
would  have  exhausted  the  patience  of  most  men.  At  one 
time  his  largest  and  most  costly  mill  was  destroyed  by  a 
mob  of  working  men,  although  it  was  defended  by  bodies  of 
soldiers  and  policemen.  For  some  time  the  weavers  would 
not  buy  his  cotton-thread  for  their  looms,  while  confessing 
that  it  was  the  best  in  England. 


OKIGIN   OF   THE    COTTON-WEAVING   MACHINERY.         235 

After  a  struggle  of  twenty  years,  the  indomitable  man 
triumphed  over  all  enemies  and  all  obstacles,  and  he  accu- 
mulated a  fortune  of  two  million  pounds  sterling.  When, 
at  length,  he  began  to  enjoy  a  little  leisure,  which  was  not 
until  he  was  fifty  years  of  age,  he  set  to  work  to  remedy 
some  of  the  defects  of  his  early  education.  At  fifty  years 
of  age,  it  is  not  easy  to  bring  the  mind  to  acquire  the  rudi- 
ments of  knowledge ;  but  this  remarkable  man  applied  him- 
self humbly  to  the  task, —  studied  grammar,  strove  to 
improve  his  handwriting,  and  to  become  a  more  correct 
speller, 

*Late  in  life,  when  he  was  high  sheriff  of  an  English 
county,  it  became  his  duty  to  present  an  address  to  George 
the  Third,  congratulating  him  upon  his  escape  from  an 
assassin.  The  king  conferred  upon  himself  the  honor  of 
knighting  the  man  whose  inventive  and  organizing  genius 
enabled  Great  Britain  to  supply  the  waste  of  her  resources 
caused  by  the  king's  folly  and  obstinacy.  For  the  last  few 
years  of  his  life,  therefore,  he  was  styled  Sir  Eichard  Ark- 
wright, 

He  died  in  1792,  in  the  sixtieth  year  of  his  age,  having 
in  thirty  years  created  the  cotton  manufacturing  system  of 
Eugland,  such  as  it  exists  to-day. 

Another  man  who  contributed  a  lifetime  of  toil  and  thought 
to  the  development  of  the  cotton  manufacture  of  England, 
was  the  founder  of  the  Peel  family.  A  hundred  years  ago, 
Robert  Peel  was  a  small  farmer  with  a  large  family,  residing 
in  the  county  of  Lancaster,  in  England.  His  farm  was  sit- 
uated two  or  three  miles  from  the  town  of  Blackburn,  and 
about  twenty  miles  from  Manchester,  now  the  centre  of  the 
English  cotton  manufacture.  The  reason  why  the  manufac- 
tures of  England  have  gathered  in  that  region  is,  that  it  is 
near  the  coal-mines, —  the  great  Lancashire  coal-field  extend- 


236  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

ing  over  four  hundred  square  miles,  which  is  among  the  most 
important  of  the  coal  regions  of  the  world. 

Lands  which  abound  in  mineral  wealth  are  frequently  not 
very  productive  on  the  surface.  The  farm  tilled  by  Robert 
Peel  was  far  from  being  fertile,  and  as  his  family  increased 
he  became  less  and  less  satisfied  with  his  condition  and  pros- 
pects. It  has  for  ages  been  customary  with  the  tillers  of 
barren  soils  and  small  farms,  to  eke  out  their  subsistence  by 
carrying  on  some  kind  of  domestic  manufacture  during  the 
winter  months.  The  custom  prevails  to  this  day  in  many 
parts  of  the  United  States.  There  are  some  counties  in  New 
Jersey  where  almost  every  farmer  spends  the  winter  in  mak- 
ing shoes,  and  there  are  parts  of  New  England  where  the 
manufacture  of  straw  hats  and  bonnets  is  the  winter  employ- 
ment of  many  a  household.  In  western  New  York,  and  in 
other  wheat-raising  States,  farmers  and  their  sons  often 
spend  the  winter  months  in  making  flour  barrels,  and  the 
industrious  people  of  Pennsylvania  carry  on  various  small 
trades  in  the  same  season. 

And  so  in  English  Lancaster  the  farmers  had  long  been 
accustomed  to  add  to  their  slender  revenues  by  the  manufac- 
ture of  a  certain  excellent  fabric,  half  linen  and  half  cotton, 
called  "  Blackburn  gray."  Eobert  Peel,  seeing  in  industry 
of  this  kind  a  means  of  employing  and  supporting  his  large 
family,  began  the  home-manufacture  of  calico.  Like  the 
founders  of  every  other  great  and  permanent  establishment 
of  which  I  have  ever  heard  or  read,  he  was  a  very  honest 
man,  and  put  his  honesty  into  the  fabrics  he  wrought.  Nor 
less  ready  was  he  to  seize  upon  improved  machinery  and 
methods.  James  Hargreaves,  a  native  of  this  county, 
invented  the  spinning-jenny  about  the  year  1760,  and  Robert 
Peel  was  one  of  the  first  to  avail  himself  of  his  neighbor's 
inventions.  He  was  soon  a  thriving  man. 


ORIGIN   OF   THE    COTTON-WEAVING   MACHINERY.          237 

His  great  success,  however,  was  in  the  printing  of  calicoes, 
an  art  which  scarcely  existed  before  his  time.  His  special 
object  was  to  invent  a  mode  of  printing  calico  by  machinery. 
At  that  period,  when  the  patent-laws  afforded  little  protec- 
tion, every  ingenious  mechanic  had,  or  thought  he  had,  val- 
uable secrets  respecting  his  trade,  which  he  kept  with  the 
greatest  care.  Apprentices  were  formerly  bound  by  their 
indentures  to  "keep  their  master's  secrets,"  and  every  one 
employed  in  the  shop  considered  himself  bound  in  honor  not 
to  betray  them.  Kobert  Peel's  experiments  in  calico  print- 
ing were  carried  on  in  the  deepest  secrecy,  just  as  forgers 
and  counterfeiters  now  ply  their  vocation.  One  of  his 
daughters  usually  assisted  him,  washing  and  ironing  the 
cloth,  mixing  the  colors,  and  sketching  the  patterns. 

Farmers  in  those  days  generally  used  pewter  plates  at 
table.  It  happened  one  day  that  Robert  Peel  drew  a  pattern 
for  calico  on  the  back  of  one  of  his  dinner-plates,  and  while 
he  was  looking  at  it,  the  thought  occurred  to  him  that  per- 
haps if  he  should  spread  color  upon  it,  and  apply  the 
requisite  degree  of  pressure,  he  could  get  an  impression  on 
calico.  In  a  cottage  close  to  his  farm-house  lived  a  woman 
who  had  one  of  those  machines  for  smoothing  fabrics  which 
worked  by  rollers.  Having  applied  color  to  his  pattern, 
and  placed  calico  over  it,  he  passed  his  plate  between  the 
rollers  of  this  calendering' machine.  He  was  delighted  to 
find  that  an  excellent  impression  was  made  upon  the  calico, 
and  thus  was  begun  the  invention  of  the  process  by  which 
to  this  day  calico  is  printed.  Robert  Peel  rapidly  improved 
upon  the  original  idea,  and  was  soon  printing  calicoes  by 
machinery. 

At  this  period  fortunes  were  not  made  with  the  rapidity 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  in  these  times.  Robert  Peel, 
however,  was  henceforth  a  prosperous  man,  and  began  to 


238  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

accumulate  property.  Relinquishing  his  farm,  he  removed 
to  a  village  near  by,  and  there  established  a  calico  printing- 
house,  which  constantly  grew  in  importance  as  long  as  he 
lived. 

As  his  sons  grew  up, — and  he  had  many  sons, — he 
established  them  in  the  neighborhood  in  various  branches  of 
the  cotton  manufacture,  so  that  each  could  be  of  service  to 
all  the  rest.  He  was  not  able  to  give  them  much  capital  at 
starting;  but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  solid  worth  and 
understanding  in  the  family,  and  these  sons  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  sensible  way  of  the  olden  time.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact,  that  every  one  of  his  sons  became  at  length 
the  proprietor  of  a  great  manufactory,  and  made  a  great 
fortune. 

The  eldest  son  of  this  able  and  vigorous  English  yeoman, 
born  in  1750,  was  also  named  Robert,  and  became,  in  the 
course  of  time,  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  learned  the  trade  of 
cotton-printing  under  his  father,  and  when  he  was  twenty 
years  of  age  he  determined  to  set  up  for  himself.  His 
father  had  not  yet  become  rich  enough  to  advance  him  any 
great  amount  of  capital,  —  not  more,  it  is  said,  than  a  hun- 
dred pounds.  But  he  had  a  young  friend  in  the  town  of 
Blackburn,  named  William  Yates,  whose  father  kept  the 
Bull  Tavern  there,  and  had  saved  a  little  money.  Young 
Robert  Peel  had  the  requisite  knowledge,  and  the  elder  Yates 
gave  his  son  three  hundred  pounds,  to  enable  him  to  go  into 
partnership  with  his  friend.  James  Haworth,  a  near 
relative  of  Robert  Peel,  joined  the  two  young  men,  and 
added  a  hundred  pounds  to  the  joint  capital.  Their  first 
operation  was  to  buy  an  old  mill,  all  in  ruins,  with  a  con- 
siderable piece  of  ground  attached  to  it.  Upon  this  ground 
they  erected,  chiefly  with  their  own  hands,  a  few  wooden 
sheds,  and  forthwith  began  to  print  calicoes. 


ORIGIN   OF   THE    COTTON-WEAVING   MACHINERY.          239 

The  humble  and  frugal  manner  in  which  they  lived  is 
pleasant  to  read  in  these  days  of  fuss  and  ostentation : 
"  William  Yates,"  says  an  English  writer,  "  being  a  married 
man,  with  a  family,  commenced  house-keeping  on  a  small 
scale,  and  to  oblige  Peel,  who  was  single,  he  agreed  to  take 
him  as  a  lodger.  The  sum  which  the  latter  first  paid  for 
board  and  lodging  was  only  eight  shillings  a  week;  but 
Yates,  considering  this  too  little,  insisted  on  the  weekly 
payment  being  increased  a  shilling,  to  which  Peel  at  first 
demurred,  and  a  difference  between  the  partners  took  place, 
which  was  eventually  compromised  by  the  lodger  paying  an 
advance  of  a  sixpence  a  week.  William  Yates'  eldest  child 
was  a  girl,  named  Ellen,  and  she  very  soon  became  an 
especial  favorite  with  the  young  lodger.  On  returning  from 
his  hard  day's  work,  he  would  take  the  little  girl  upon  his 
knee,  and  say  to  her :  '  Nelly,  thou  bonny  little  dear,  wilt 
be  my  wife?'  to  which  the  child  would  readily  answer, 
'Yes,'  as  any  child  would  do.  'Then  I'll  wait  for  thee, 
Nelly;  I'll  wed  thee,  and  none  else.'  And  Robert  Peel 
did  wait.  As  the  girl  grew  in  beauty  towards  womanhood, 
his  determination  to  wait  for  her  was  strengthened ;  and 
after  the  lapse  of  ten  years  —  years  of  close  application  to 
business  and  rapidly-increasing  prosperity — Robert  Peel 
married  Ellen  Yates  when  she  had  completed  her  seven- 
teenth year." 

The  success  of  this  firm  was  great  and  rapid,  beyond  all 
previous  precedent.  Robert  Peel  was  the  soul  of  the  enter- 
prise. He  was  equally  bold  and  prudent,  most  prompt  to 
adopt  every  real  improvement,  and  sagacious  and  far-seeing 
in  an  eminent  degree.  At  one  time  he  had  fifteen  thousand 
persons  in  his  employment,  and  he  made  a  fortune  of  two 
million  pounds  sterling.  He  owed  his  baronetcy  to  the  zeal 
and  liberality  with  which  he  supported  the  politics  of 


240  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

George  the  Third  and  the  Tory  party.  It  was  he  who, 
during  the  French  wars,  gave  the  king  a  frigate,  with  all 
her  guns  and  equipage  complete. 

Elected  to  Parliament  in  1790,  he  was  a  member  of  that 
body  for  thirty  years.  He  was  a  most  thorough  and  con- 
sistent Tory.  He  appears  to  have  been  the  author  of  the 
sentiment,  that  "  a  national  debt  is  a  national  blessing  "  ;  at 
least,  he  wrote  a  pamphlet  entitled,  "  The  national  debt  pro- 
ductive of  national  prosperity."  What  wonder  that  George 
the  Third  made  him  a  baronet ! 

He  died  in  1830,  soon  after  completing  his  eightieth  year, 
leaving  the  greater  part  of  his  immense  possessions  to  his 
eldest  son,  the  great  Sir  Kobert  Peel. 


JOHN  FILLMORE, 

AND   HIS  VICTORY  OVER  THE  PIRATES. 


PEIDE  in  one's  ancestry  is  condemned  as  a  foible  only 
by  those  who  have  no  ancestry  to  be  proud  of.  Foible  or  no 
foible,  few  would  hesitate  to  excuse  Mr.  Millard  Fillmore 
for  boasting  a  little  of  the  gallant  exploit  of  his  great-great- 
grandfather, John  Fillmore,  of  Boston,  in  delivering  himself 
from  the  pirates,  and  bringing  them  to  justice.  A  braver 
act  has  scarcely  been  recorded  in  the  annals  of  New  Eng- 
land. 

The  father  of  John  Fillmore  was  a  New-England  mariner, 
who  was  captured  by  a  French  frigate,  carried  away,  and 
kept  long  in  close  and  cruel  confinement ;  and  after  his 
exchange,  died  on  the  voyage  home.  His  widow  lived  then 
in  Boston,  with  her  son  John,  whom  she  apprenticed  in  due 
time  to  a  carpenter.  Opposite  her  house  there  lived  a  boy 
named  William  White,  apprenticed  to  a  tailor,  with  whom 
her  son  John  became  intimate,  and  both  of  the  lads  had  the 
boy's  passion,  so  common  then  in  seaport  towns,  for  going 
to  sea.  The  melancholy  fate  of  John  Fillmore's  father  had 
no  eflect  to  check  this  strong  desire.  White,  three  years 
the  elder,  was  out  of  his  time  first,  and  as  soon  as  he  was 
free,  went  on  board  a  ship,  and  was  seen  in  Boston  no  more. 

Soon  after  White's  departure,  young  Fillmore,  being  sev- 
enteen years  of  age,  entreated  his  mother  to  let  him  go  a 
voyage  ;  but  she  opposed  it  so  strongly,  and  with  such  per- 
duasive  tenderness,  that  he  reluctantly  postponed  his  project, 


242  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  said  nothing  about  it  for  two  years  more,  when  he 
renewed  his  request.  His  mother,  perceiving  that  his  desire 
was  unconquerable,  unless  it  were  gratified,  and  thinking, 
perhaps,  that  a  taste  of  a  sailor's  hard  life  might  sicken  him 
of  it  forever,  gave  her  consent  that  he  should  make  one 
fishing  voyage  in  the  sloop  Dolphin,  then  lying  in  the  harbor 
getting  ready  for  sea.  He  shipped  on  board  the  sloop 
accordingly. 

Nothing  unusual  occurred  until  they  reached  the  fishing 
banks,  nor  for  some  little  time  after  they  had  begun  to  fish. 
One  day,  to  their  great  alarm,  a  large  armed  ship  hove  in 
sight,  which  some  of  the  old  hands  soon  suspected  to  be  a 
pirate.  As  it  was  impossible  either  to  get  away  from  her 
by  flight,  or  to  offer  any  effectual  resistance,  they  were 
obliged  to  await  her  coming  up,  and  take  the  consequences. 
In  a  few  minutes  the  pirate  hove  to,  and  lowered  away  a 
boat,  which  came  alongside. 

"  Who  are  you,  and  where  are  you  bound?"  cried  a  voice 
from  the  boat. 

"The  Dolphin,  from  Boston,  fishing,"  answered  the  cap- 
tain of  the  sloop. 

The  boat  then  returned  to  the  ship,  but  soon  came  back, 
and  the  officer  commanding  her  demanded  a  list  of  the  men 
of  the  sloop's  crew ;  having  obtained  which,  he  returned 
alongside  the  pirate.  Before  long  the  boat  again  approached 
the  sloop,  bringing  with  her  a  young  man,  whom  John  Fill- 
more,  to  his  amazement  and  horror,  recognized  as  his  old 
friend  William  White,  the  tailor's  apprentice  !  It  seems, 
that  upon  looking  over  the  list  of  the  sloop's  crew,  he  had 
recognized  the  name  of  his  old  companion  ;  and  he  told  the 
pirate  captain  that  John  Fillmore  was  a  good,  stout,  resolute 
fellow,  just  such  a  hand  as  was  wanted  on  board,  and 
advised  him  to  take  him  into  his  service.  So,  when  the 


JOHN  FILLMORE'S  VICTORY.  243 

boat  returned,  the  pirate  officer  told  the  captain  of  the  sloop, 
that  if  he  would  give  up  John  Fillmore,  the  rest  of  the  crew 
could  go  free. 

The  captain,  an  honest,  worthy  man,  took  Fillmore  aside, 
and  communicated  to  him  this  terrible  message,  expressing 
great  sorrow  and  sympathy. 

w  And  yet,"  said  he,  "  as  we  are  entirely  in  the  power  of 
a  bloody ?  merciless  ruffian,  and  have  no  hope  of  escape  but 
by  giving  you  up,  I  believe  you  must  go  and  try  your  for- 
tune with  them." 

After  a  few  moments'  reflection,  the  young  man  replied  as 
follows :  — 

" Captain,"  said  he,  "I  have  ever  been  faithful  to  your 
interests  and  commands,  and  I  have  always  wished  to  do 
my  duty  punctually  and  well ;  but  I  am  determined  not  to  go 
on  board  the  pirate,  let  the  consequence  be  what  it  may." 

The  captain  spoke  to  the  pirate  officer,  and  the  boat 
departed ;  but  immediately  returned,  with  orders  to  bring, 
John  Fillmore  back,  dead  or  alive. 

This  message  being  delivered  to  the  young  man,  he  was 
thrown  into  the  greatest  perplexity.  If  he  refused,  instant 
death  stared  them  all  in  the  face ;  and  if  he  went,  he  expected 
to  be  murdered  for  refusing  to  sign  the  articles  of  the  pirate 
ship,  which  he  was  resolved  never  to  do,  though  put  to  the 
last  extremity  of  torture.  After  thinking  the  matter  over, 
he  got  together  his  kit,  bade  his  comrades  good-by,  stepped 
into  the  boat,  and  was  soon  on  the  pirate's  quarter-deck, 
face  to  face  with  that  dread  bandit  of  the  seas,  the  notorious 
Captain  Phillips. 

Phillips,  it  appears,  received  him  civilly  enough,  and 
renewed  the  promise  made  by  the  mate  to  let  him  go  after 
two  months'  service.  Fillmore,  on  his  part,  while  constantly 
refusing  to  sign  the  articles,  agreed  to  render  faithful  service 
as  a  seaman  during  the  term  named. 


244  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

The  two  months  passed  without  any  captures  of  impor- 
tance being  made.  Fillmore  then  demanded  his  release. 
Phillips  replied  good-humoredly :  — 

"We  have  done  but  little  business  since  you  came  on 
board,  and  I  can't  well  spare  you  yet ;  but  if  you  will  stay 
with  me  three  months  longer,  upon  my  honor  I  will  set  you 
at  liberty." 

The  three  months  also  passed,  during  which  a  few  small 
vessels  only  were  overhauled,  plundered,  and  two  or  three 
of  their  best  hands  taken.  Again  John  Fillmore  reminded 
the  pirate  of  his  promise,  and  asked  to  be  set  ashore,  that 
he  might  rejoin  his  mother.  Phillips,  in  a  tremendous  fury, 
roared  out :  — 

"  Set  you  at  liberty  ?  Damn  you !  you  shall  be  set  at 
liberty  when  I  am  damned,  and  not  before  I  " 

After  this  Phillips  became  much  more  harsh  and  abusive 
toward  the  young  man,  sometimes  striking  him  with  his 
sword,  and  discharging  a  volley  of  execrations  at  him  upon 
the  slightest  offence,  real  or  imaginary.  Several  valuable 
prizes  were  taken  during  the  next  two  months,  by  manning 
which  the  crew  of  the  pirate  had  become  considerably  weak- 
ened, until  there  were  only  seventeen  men  left,  five  of  whom 
were  prisoners,  like  Fillmore,  who  had  not  signed  the 
articles. 

These  five  honest  men  began  to  think  of  the  possibility  of 
subduing  the  pirates,  and  taking  the  ship  into  port.  In  the 
dead  of  night,  when  the  pirates  were  in  a  deep  drunken  sleep, 
they  got  together  and  formed  their  plan-  Two  of  them, 
although  they  swore  secrecy,  frankly  owned  that  they  had 
not  courage  enough  to  join  in  the  attempt.  The  work, 
therefore,  would  have  to  be  done  by  three  men,  one  of  whom 
was  an  Indian,  in  whom  the  other  two  had  no  great  con- 
fidence. It  was,  in  fact,  two  against  eleven,  —  Fillmore  and 


JOHN  FILLMOKE'S  VICTORY.  245 

Cheeseman,  a  carpenter,  against  Phillips  and  ten  of  his 
crew. 

It  so  happened  that  the  pirate  captain,  before  sitting  down 
to  the  night's  debauch,  had  ordered  Cheeseman  to  do  some 
carpenter  work  on  the  quarter-deck  the  next  morning,  which 
would  require  the  use  of  a  broadaxe.  Their  plan  was,  that 
at  noon  the  next  day,  at  the  moment  when  the  quarter- 
master stood  near  the  bulwarks,  quadrant  in  hand,  taking 
the  sun,  Cheeseman  should  seize  him  and  throw  him  into 
the  sea ;  and  at  the  same  instant  Fillmore  should  pick  up  the 
broadaxe,  and,  to  use  his  own  language,  "make  the  best  use 
of  it  he  could."  The  Indian,  without  having  any  particular 
duty  assigned  him,  was  to  join  in  the  fray  and  do  his  best. 

At  midnight  their  plan  was  complete,  and  they  separated 
for  the  night.  John  Fillmore,  on  going  into  the  caboose, 
found  stretched  upon  the  floor  two  of  the  most  desperate  of 
the  pirates,  in  so  deep  a  drunken  stupor  as  to  have  lost  the 
power  of  feeling. 

"I  took  fire,"  says  Fillmore,  in  his  narrative,  "and  burnt 
these  two  villains  in  the  feet,  while  they  lay  senseless,  so 
badly  as  to  render  them  unable  to  be  upon  deck  the  next 
day." 

This  reduced  the  pirate  gang  to  nine.  Early  in  the  morn- 
ing the  confederates  were  on  deck ;  the  tools  were  taken  aft, 
and  the  broadaxe  was  placed  where  it  could  be  most  con- 
veniently seized.  The  pirates  slept  late  after  their  carouse. 
Fillmore,  afraid  that  they  would  not  get  up  in  time  to  take 
an  observation  of  the  sun,  went  to  the  cabin  door  soon  after 
ten  o'clock,  and  told  the  captain  it  was  getting  about  time  to 
take 'the  sun. 

"Damn  you  I "  he  growled ;  "it  is  none  of  your  business." 

However,  the  officers  soon  came  on  deck,  —  captain, 
master,  quarter-master,  and  boatswain. 


246  TRIUMPHS     OF    ENTERPRISE. 

The  agitation  of  the  confederates  now  became  most  in- 
tense, and  the  white  man  who  could  not  muster  courage  to 
take  part,  became  so  deadly  pale  that  the  captain  noticed  it, 
and  asked  what  was  the  matter  with  him. 

"  He  has  been  sick  all  night,"  said  the  ready  Fillmore.  w] 
believe  a  dram  would  help  him." 

"  Go  to  my  case,"  said  Phillips,  "  and  get  a  bottle  of 
brandy." 

When  the  brandy  was  brought,  they  all  drank  of  it  except 
the  Indian,  who,  although  a  drinking  man,  wisely  refused  to 
touch  a  drop  of  it.  The  critical  moment  arrived.  The  mas- 
ter prepared  to  take  the  observation,  Cheeseman  keeping  near 
him  with  a  hammer  in  his  hand,  and  Fillmore  standing  close 
to  the  broadaxe,  and  with  one  foot  upon  it.  The  master 
raised  the  quadrant  to  his  eye.  Cheeseman  seized  him  and 
threw  him  into  the  ocean.  Fillmore  instantly  caught  up  the 
broadaxe,  and  with  one  blow  clove  the  boatswain's  skull. 
He  then  struck  the  captain  a  blow  on  the  head,  which  only 
half  stunned  him.  But  at  that  moment  Cheeseman  came  up 
with  his  hammer,  struck  him  once  upon  the  head,  and  killed 
him.  The  quarter-master  now  came  running  out  of  the 
cabin,  also  with  a  hammer  in  his  hand,  and  running  toward 
Cheeseman,  would  have  probably  struck  him  a  mortal  blow 
if  the  Indian  tyad  not  caught  him  by  the  elbow  and  held  him 
for  a  moment.  Fillmore  swung  his  broadaxe  round  with 
such  tremendous  force  against  the  back  of  his  neck,  as  to 
nearly  cut  his  head  off,  and  his  head  fell  down  before  him, 
hanging  by  the  skin. 

The  rest  of  the  pirate  crew,  panic-stricken,  made  no  resist- 
ance, but  surrendered  the  vessel,  and  begged  for  their  lives. 
Fillmore  and  his  comrades  took  the  vessel  into  Boston  har 
bor,  where  they  hoisted  their  pirate's  colors,  and  fired  a  gun 
for  the  authorities  to  come  on  board ;  into  whose  hands  they 


JOHN  FILLMORE'S  VICTORY.  247 

gave  up  the  vessel  and  the  prisoners.  Six  of  the  pirates 
were  hanged,  one  of  whom  was  White,  who  had  caused  Fill- 
more's  capture.  Cheeseman  received  an  appointment  in  one 
of  the  king's  ship-yards ;  the  Indian  also  had  some  reward ; 
and  the  court  which  tried  the  pirates  presented  Fillmore 
with  Captain  Phillips's  gun,  silver-hilted  sword,  silver  shoe 
and  knee  buckles,  and  two  gold  rings.  The  ship,  instead  of 
being  given  to  the  heroic  men  who  had  captured  her,  was 
confiscated  to  the  king's  service. 

After  these  events,  John  Fillmore  settled  at  Norwich, 
Connecticut,  where  he  married,  reared  a  family,  acquired 
property,  lived  happily,  and  died  lamented.  Often,  in  the 
decline  of  life,  he  was  called  upon  to  tell  the  thrilling  story 
of  his  deliverance  from  the  pirates ;  and  finally  he  wrote  it 
out,  and  it  was  printed.  From  a  copy  of  his  narrative 
kindly  given  me  by  his  distinguished  descendant,  the  ex- 
president,  I  have  retold  the  tale.  The  stout  and  vigorous 
frame  which,  together  with  his  lion  heart,  enabled  him  to  do 
this  valiant  deed,  he  transmitted  to  his  posterity.  Mr. 
Millard  Fillmore  is  a  person  of  handsome  proportions  ;  and 
his  father,  Deacon  Fillmore,  whom  I  have  seen,  was  as 
erect  and  vigorous  an  old  gentleman  as  you  could  meet  in  ft 
week's  journey. 

16 


SINGULAR  TRIUMPH  OF  RESOLUTION. 

PAINTING  WITHOUT  HANDS. 

OPPOSITE  the  "Tribune"  office  in  New  York,  there  sits,  in 
the  open  street,  a  young  man  who  has  lost  both  arms,  and 
who  earns  his  livelihood  by  cutting  kindling  wood  with  his 
feet.  With  one  of  his  feet  he  holds  a  pine  board,  and  with 
the  toes  of  the  other  he  holds  a  long  sharp  knife,  with  which 
he  cuts,  with  great  rapidity,  long  strips  from  the  board.  On 
cold  days  in  the  winter  you  can  see  him  thus  employed,  and 
he  does  not  appear  to  suffer  either  from  the  severity  of  the 
weather,  or  the  awkwardness  and  monotony  of  his  occu- 
pation. 

I  remember,  too,  that  when  I  was  about  ten  years  of  age, 
a  man  used  to  sit  on  the  Battery  in  New  York,  just  within 
the  gate  of  Castle  Garden,  who  was  also  deprived  of  both 
arms,  and  who  used  to  cut  out  very  good  likenesses  from 
black  paper  with  a  pair  of  scissors  held  in  his  toes.  He  cut 
out  my  likeness  for  one,  and  I  kept  it  as  a  curiosity  for  sev- 
eral years.  We  have  recently  seen  also  how  quickly  men 
could  learn  to  write  with  the  left  hand,  who  had  lost  their 
right  in  the  war ;  some  of  whom  learned  to  write  legibly  in 
ten  days,  and  very  well  in  three  months. 

But  what  are  such  examples  as  these  to  the  case  of  John 
Carter,  whose  arms  and  legs  were  all  paralyzed  and  totally 
helpless,  and  who  yet  became  one  of  the  most  exquisite 
draughtsmen  that  ever  lived?  The  reader,  I  am  sure,  will 
be  interested  in  this  story  of  a  man  who  showed  more  strik- 


250  TKIUMPH8    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

ingly  than  any  other  the  power  which  the  human  mind  has 
to  triumph  over  bodily  deficiencies. 

On  a  Saturday  night  in  May,  1836,  a  party  of  young  silk- 
weavers  were  carousing  in  an  ale-house  in  the  village  of 
Coggeshall,  in  the  English  County  of  Essex.  Silk- weaving 
was  a  profitable  employment  then,  and  these  men  earned 
what  they  call  in  England  good  wages ;  that  is,  about 
four  dollars  a  week :  much  of  which  they  wasted  in  guzzling 
beer.  Late  in  the  evening,  when  the  party  had  taken 
enough  beer  to  deprive  them  of  what  little  sense  they  had, 
one  of  them  proposed  that  they  should  go  to  a  gentleman's 
park  near  by,  to  rob  the  rooks'  nests  of  the  young  birds,  —  a 
great  delicacy  to  men  who  seldom  eat  any  meat  but  bacon. 
The  suggestion  found  favor,  and  seven  or  eight  weavers  sal- 
lied forth  on  the  expedition  about  midnight. 

One  of  them,  John  Carter  by  name,  a  wild,  dissolute  young 
fellow,  about  twenty  years  of  age,  climbed  to  the  top  of  a 
high  fir-tree,  and  while  he  was  attempting  to  jump  to  another, 
which  in  the  darkness  of  the  night  he  thought  he  could 
reach,  he  struck  short  of  his  object,  and  fell  to  the  ground. 
The  height  of  the  branch  from  which  he  slipped  was  about 
forty  feet,  and  he  would  probably  have  been  killed  imme- 
diately, if  his  fall  had  not  been  broken  by  other  branches. 
As  it  was,  he  lay  upon  the  ground  insensible,  and  his  compan- 
ions carried  him  home  upon  a  hurdle.  The  accident  occurred 
about  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  he  was  brought  home 
shortly  before  daybreak. 

His  wife,  who  had  gone  to  bed  sick,  and  anxious  about  her 
scapegrace  of  a  husband,  heard  the  noise  outside  of  the 
cottage,  and  supposing  he  had  come  home  drunk,  as  he  often 
had  before,  came  down  to  let  him  in.  Upon  opening  the 
door,  she  saw  her  husband  lying  upon  the  hurdle  still  insen- 
sible, with  one  of  his  friends  sitting  by  his  side,  the  others 


SINGULAR   TRIUMPH   OF   RESOLUTION.  251 

having  fled.  A  doctor  was  sent  for,  who  arrived  between 
four  and  five  in  the  morning.  The  doctor  found  him  insen- 
sible and  motionless,  cold  and  breathing  imperfectly,  with 
a  pulse  extremely  feeble.  He  concluded  at  once  that  either 
the  brain  or  spinal  column  was  fatally  injured,  and  that  the 
patient  would  die  in  a  few  hours.  He  ordered,  however,  hot 
flannels  and  other  means  of  restoring  warmth  to  the  body. 
Towards  evening  the  pulse  became  stronger,  and  in  the  course 
of  the  next  day  his  senses  returned,  and  he  was  able  to 
inform  the  doctor  that  the  injury  was  in  the  upper  part  of 
the  spine,  near  the  back  of  the  neck. 

It  soon  appeared  that  the  entire  body  below  the  neck  was 
paralyzed,  and  so  it  remained  as  long  as  the  patient  lived. 
He  suffered  little  pain,  but  he  could  neither  move  hand  nor 
foot,  nor  turn  himself  in  bed,  nor  was  there  any  feeling  in 
his  flesh,  except  in  that  of  his  head  and  neck ;  and  thus  he 
lay  for  fourteen  years,  his  body  torpid  and  only  his  head 
really  alive. 

Previous  to  the  accident  there  had  been  nothing  remark- 
able in  his  life  or  character.  His  parents  were  honest  labor- 
ing people,  and  he  had  attended  a  charity-school  long  enough 
to  learn  to  read  and  write.  As  a  school-boy  he  had  been 
noted  for  an  unusual  inclination  to  draw.  He  was  one  of 
those  boys  who,  whenever  they  have  a  pen  or  pencil  in  hand, 
or  a  piece  of  chalk  or  charcoal,  are  strongly  disposed  to  dis- 
figure their  books  and  slates,  and  the  walls  of  their  room, 
with  rough  representations  of  animals  and  other  familiar 
objects.  At  the  usual  age  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  silk- 
weaver,  and  at  twenty  was  a  married  man,  distressing  his 
wife  with  his  behavior.  Not  that  he  was  bad  by  nature,  but 
he  had  the  misfortune  to  live  in  a  parish  where  virtue  was 
made  disgusting  or  ridiculous  by  the  very  people  who  were 
employed  to  render  it  lovely  and  engaging;  and  so  he 


252  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

thought  it  a  fine  thing  to  muddle  his  brains  with  beer,  and 
to  seek  amusement  by  making  inroads  upon  other  people's 
property.  The  terrible  accident  which  laid  him  helpless  for 
life  upon  a  bed,  awoke  his  better  nature,  and  he  became 
contrite,  affectionate,  and  patient. 

Being  fond  of  reading,  and  no  other  pleasure  being  now 
within  his  reach,  his  friends  and  neighbors  kept  him  pretty 
well  supplied  with  books,  and  he  passed  much  of  his  time 
with  a  book  held  conveniently  before  him  by  a  machine  made 
for  the  purpose.  His  wife  one  day  brought  home  to  him  a 
tract  which  gave  an  account  of  a  young  woman  in  an  asylum 
at  Liverpool,  who,  after  losing  the  use  of  her  limbs,  had 
learned  to  draw  tolerably  with  her  mouth. 

"  The  thought  at  once  came  into  my  -mind,"  he  once  wrote 
(and  he  wrote  these  very  words  with  his  mouth,  and  in  a 
very  good  hand  too),  "that  I  might  certainly  do  the  same, 
and  I  could  not  rest  satisfied  till  I  made  the  attempt." 

He  began  immediately,  glad  of  a  new  means  of  breaking 
the  monotony  of  his  life.  He  drew  first  upon  a  slate,  and 
then  upon  pieces  of  paper  pinned  to  the  pillow ;  using  at 
first  only  a  pencil,  but  afterwards  coloring  his  pictures  with 
water  colors.  I  have  before  me  a  copy  of  the  first  picture 
he  ever  painted  in  this  manner.  A  remarkably  brilliant  but- 
terfly was  one  day  caught  in  his  room.  Thinking  he  could 
paint  it,  he  sent  for  a  sixpenny-box  of  paints,  and  soon 
produced  a  portrait  of  the  insect  so  perfect  that  it  was  pro- 
nounced a  fac-simile,  both  in  form  and  color.  He  now 
produced  many  pictures  of  birds  and  flowers,  which  were 
readily  sold  in  the  village,  and  the  price  of  which  was  a  wel- 
come addition  to  the  allowance  made  him  by  the  parish. 

The  manner  in  which  he  worked  is  described  by  the  cler- 
gyman of  his  parish,  the  author  of  a  memoir  of  Carter,  pub- 
lished recently  in  this  city.  On  a  desk,  supported  at  the 


SINGULAR   TRIUMPH   OF   RESOLUTION.  253 

right  slant  before  him,  his  drawing  paper  was  fastened  with 
those  large  flat-headed  pins  which  artists  and  architects  use 
for  the  purpose.  He  held  his  pencil  as  firmly  between  his 
teeth  as  it  it  had  been  in  a  vice.  A  saucer  of  color  or  India 
ink  was  prepared,  into  which  his  wife  or  sister  dipped  his 
brush  and  placed  it  in  his  mouth;  when,  says  the  clergy- 
man, w  by  a  curious  muscular  action  of  his  lips  and  tongue, 
he  would  twirl  the  brush  round  with  great  velocity,  until  he 
had  thrown  off  all  superfluous  ink,  and  brought  it  to  a  very 
fine  point.  He  then  held  it  fast  between  his  jaw  teeth,  and, 
by  the  motion  of  the  head,  produced  the  most  accurate  and 
delicate  strokes.  .  .  .  Considering  how  great  the  evap- 
oration would  be  in  summer-time,  and  how  impossible  it  was, 
from  his  recumbent  position,  for  the  colors  to  flow  to  the 
point  of  the  brush,  when  actually  touching  his  work,  it  will 
easily  be  imagined  how  troublesome  an  operation  it  must 
have  been  to  him,  and  what  incessant  assistance  he  required ; 
for  the  brush  was  always  taken  from  his  mouth,  replenished, 
and  replaced  by  his  attendant." 

He  attained  to  a  fineness  of  stroke  which  probably  the  hand 
has  never  equalled.  In  the  memoir  just  quoted,  photographs 
are  given  often  of  his  works,  and  I  think  I  never  saw  any- 
thing so  fine  in  drawing  before.  One  of  these  is  the  picture 
of  a  sick  horse,  standing  in  his  stable,  with  drooping  head, 
his  body  covered  with  a  large,  thick  blanket.  The  expres- 
sion of  the  horse  is  perfect,  and  the  picture  is  wrought  out 
with  so  much  distinctness  that  you  can  almost  count  the  very 
straws  of  the  horse's  bed.  His  most  celebrated  work  is 
called  "  The  Village  Rat-Catcher  and  his  Dogs,"  which  is  most 
admirable,  both  in  the  arrangement  of  the  figures  and  in  the 
amazing  delicacy  and  clearness  of  the  execution. 

This  exquisite  artist  lived,  as  I  have  said,  fourteen  years 
after  his  accident,  and  lost  his  life  at  last  by  another  acci- 


254  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

dent.  He  had  a  kind  of  couch  made  upon  wheels,  upon 
which  his  wife  or  sister  used  to  draw  him  about  the  country 
on  fine  days,  and  to  church  on  Sundays.  He  was  confirmed 
as  he  lay  upon  this  couch  in  church  by  the  Bishop  of  London ; 
the  bishop  leaving  the  altar,  and  going  to  where  the  poor 
fellow  lay,  and  there  placing  his  hands  upon  his  head,  —  a 
spectacle  which  brought  tears  to  the  eyes  of  the  whole  con- 
gregation. In  the  summer  of  1850  his  sister  had  drawn  him 
out,  when,  wishing  to  give  her  the  pleasure  of  a  favorite 
walk  on  a  beautiful  summer  day,  he  insisted  that  she  should 
go  home  across  the  fields,  while  he  was  drawn  home  on  the 
road  by  a  boy.  His  sister  at  length  yielded  to  his  solicita- 
tions. He  watched  her  as  long  as  he  could  see  her,  fearful 
that  she  might  be  frightened  at  some  cattle  grazing  near 
where  she  had  to  pass.  He  was  of  an  exceedingly  loving 
nature,  and  his  countenance  wore  a  singularly  angelic  aspect, 
which  was  often  remarked.  A  few  minutes  after,  the  boy, 
who  was  drawing  him  down  a  slight  descent,  tripped  and 
overthrew  the  carriage,  and  poor  Carter  was  thrown  violently 
to  the  ground.  The  shock  proved  to  be  too  severe  for  him, 
and  a  week  after  he  died. 

It  was  discovered,  after  his  death,  that  three  bones  of  the 
spinal  column  were  displaced,  one  of  which,  by  pressing 
upon  the  spinal  cord,  had  deprived  of  sense  and  motion  all 
the  body  below  the  point  of  compression.  One  of  his  pic- 
tures is  now  the  property  of  Queen  Victoria,  and  another, 
"The  Rat-catcher,"  has  been  engraved  and  published. 


A  HEKO  OF  LITEKATTJKE— THOMAS  HOOD. 


IT  is  a  curious  fact  that  those  who  contribute  to  the  mer- 
riment of  mankind,  are,  as  a  class,  among  the  least  happy  of 
our  species.  Comic  actors,  for  example,  are  usually  very 
grave  men,  often  subject  to  melancholy,  sometimes  to  ill 
temper;  and,  in  some  notorious  instances,  they  have  been 
cruelly  unfortunate.  I  have  been  behind  the  scenes  of  a 
theatre  two  or  three  times  in  my  life,  and  I  was  always 
struck  with  the  serious  demeanor  of  the  comic  men  when 
they  were  off  duty. 

I  well  remember  one  evening,  when  the  curtain  went  down 
upon  the  gay  comedy  of  "  The  Honeymoon,"  the  startling 
change  which  came  over  the  countenances  of  the  comedians 
at  the  very  moment  that  they  were  hidden  from  the  gaze  of 
the  audience.  Every  face  collapsed  into  an  expression  of 
mingled  sadness  and  fatigue,  and  they  all  seemed  to  slink 
away,  in  their  fine  clothes  and  staring  paint,  as  if  they  were 
thoroughly  sick  of  the  whole  business,  and  never  meant  to 
appear  on  the  stage  again.  The  excellent  artist  who  played 
the  part  of  the  "  Mock  Duke  "  passed  me  as  he  went  slowly 
and  wearily  up  to  his  dressing-room.  I  shall  never  forget 
how  tired  and  dejected  he  looked ;  and  I  have  since  learned 
that  he  had  abundant  cause  to  be  dejected.  He  was  amusing 
the  public  and  keeping  multitudes  in  a  roar  of  laughter, 
when  his  heart  was  torn  and  desolate  by  the  most  acute 
domestic  afflictions. 


256  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Humorous  writers,  I  should  suppose,  are  not  more  happy 
or  more  fortunate  than  their  brethren  of  the  stage.  I  could 
mention  some  striking  examples  among  the  living ;  but  it 
seems  to  be  a  necessity  of  the  case,  that  those  who  cheer  and 
entertain  us  by  their  pleasure-giving  talents,  should  them- 
selves tread  the  wine-press  alone,  and  receive  little  help  and 
little  sympathy  until  neither  can  do  them  any  good. 

The  life  and  death  of  Thomas  Hood,  author  of  the  "  Song 
of  the  Shirt,"  and  editor  for  many  years  of  the  "Comic 
Annual,"  seems  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  most  pathetic  trage- 
dies of  modern  times.  m  Observe  this  passage  from  one  of 
the  letters  of  his  wife  :  — 

"  All  Tuesday  Hood  has  been  in  such  an  exhausted  state  he  was 
obliged  to  go  to  bed ;  but  7  was  up  all  night  ready  to  write  at  his 
dictation  if  he  felt  able;  but  it  was  so  utter  a  prostration  of  strength, 
that  he  could  scarcely  speak,  much  less  use  his  head  at  all.  The 
doctor  said  it  was  extreme  exhaustion  from  the  cold  weather,  want 
of  air  and  exercise,  acted  upon  by  great  anxiety  of-  mind  and  ner- 
vousness. .  .  .  The  shorter  the  time  became  the  more  nervous 
he  was,  and  incapable  of  writing.  .  .  .  His  distress  that  the 
last  post  was  come  without  his  being  able  to  send  (manuscript  to  a 
magazine)  was  dreadful." 

It  was  jests  for  a  comic  periodical  that  poor  Hood  strug- 
gled to  invent  that  night,  while  his  wife  sat  at  his  side  wait- 
ing to  write  them  down  at  his  dictation.  Such  scenes 
occurred  many  a  time  in  the  author's  room, — he  so  racked 
with  agony  that  he  could  neither  write  nor  draw,  and  his  wife 
sitting  patiently  during  the  slow  hours  of  the  night,  waiting 
to  see  if  her  husband  would  have  an  interval  of  ease  when  he 
could  exercise  his  powers.  The  following  is  a  portion  of  an 
apology  once  inserted  in  the  magazine  called  "  Hood's  Own  "  : 

"  Up  to  Thursday,  the  twenty-third,  Mr.  Hood  did  not  relinquish 
the  hope  that  he  should  have  strength  to  continue  in  the  present 


LITERATURE  —  THOMAS    HOOD.  257 

number  the  novel  which  he  began  in  the  last.  ...  On  the  same 
evening,  sitting  up  in  bed,  he  tried  to  invent  and  sketch  a  few  comic 
designs ;  but  even  this  effort  exceeded  his  strength,  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  wandering  delirium  of  utter  nervous  exhaustion." 

And  yet,  even  in  such  desperate  circumstances,  he  could 
sometimes  throw  off  a  great  number  of  excellent  jests'  and 
amusing  pictures.  On  that  very  night  just  described,  he 
succeeded  in  drawing  two  humorous  sketches,  which  were 
published  in  the  magazine.  One  was  a  picture  of  a  magpie, 
with  a  hawk's  hood  on  its  head,  which  was  called  "  Hood's 
Mag."  The  other  picture  was  a  collection  of  bottles,  leeches, 
and  blisters  ;  and  this  was  styled  "The  Editor's  Apologies." 
During  the  last  twelve  years  of  his  life,  he  scarcely  ever 
wrote  except  with  great  physical  pain  or  inconvenience.  Nor 
was  it  possible  for  him  to  rest ;  for  the  compensation  paid  to 
contributors  was  smaller  then  than  now,  and  he  had  a  family 
dependent  on  him.  He  was  in  debt  through  the  fault  of 
others,  and  it  required  the  utmost  exertion  of  his  powers 
to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door. 

His  father  was  a  London  bookseller  and  author,  —  more 
successful,  however,  in  selling  than  in  making  books.  He 
wrote  two  novels,  which  have  long  since  passed  into  obliv- 
ion ;  but  as  a  bookseller  he  was  successful  enough  to  rear 
his  family  respectably,  and  give  his  children  such  education 
as  was  usual  at  that  day,  in  his  sphere  of  life.  His  second 
son,  Thomas,  was  born  in  the  last  year  of  the  last  century. 
Losing  his  father  when  he  was  a  boy  of  fifteen,  he  was 
apprenticed  to  an  engraver,  under  whom  he  acquired  that 
skill  with  his  pencil  which  he  turned  to  account  as  the  editor 
of  comic  periodicals.  To  his  widowed  mother  he  was  a 
most  affectionate  and  faithful  son.  She  did  not  long  survive 
her  husband,  and  her  last  days  were  greatly  soothed  and 
cheered  by  the  untiring  services  of  her  children. 


258  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

If  the  reader  knows  anything  of  the  writings  of  Thomas 
Hood,  he  is  aware  that  there  was  one  thing  in  the  world  that 
he  hated  more  than  all  others  besides,  and  that  was  the 
cant  of  religion.  I  have  just  discovered  the  cause  of  the 
peculiar  intensity  of  this  hatred.  Being  much  persecuted  by 
a  female  neighbor  with  tracts  and  canting  letters,  he  sat 
down  one  day,  and  wrote  her  a  long  satirical  remonstrance, 
which  he  entitled,  "My  Tract."  It  is  extremely  ingenious 
and  forcible ;  but  the  last  paragraph  gives  us  the  key,  not 
only  to  this  composition,  but  to  others  of  a  similar  nature 
which  abound  in  his  works  :  — 

"  And  now,  Madam,  farewell  Your  mode  of  recalling  yourself 
to  my  memory  reminds  me  that  your  fanatical  mother  insulted  mine 
in  the  last  days  of  her  life  (which  was  marked  by  every  Christian 
virtue),  by  the  presentation  of  a  tract  addressed  to  Infidels.  I 
remember,  also,  that  the  same  heartless  woman  intruded  herself, 
with  less  reverence  than  a  Mohawk  squaw  would  have  exhibited, 
on  the  chamber  of  death,  and  interrupted  with  her  jargon  almost 
my  very  last  interview  with  my  dying  parent.  Such  reminiscences 
warrant  some  severity ;  but  if  more  be  wanting,  know  that  my 
poor  sister  has  been  excited  by  a  circle  of  canters  like  yourself 
into  a  religious  frenzy,  and  is  at  this  moment  in  a  private  mad- 
house." 

That  explains  all.  And  terrible  was  the  revenge  which 
he  took  upon  all  the  tribe  of  hypocrites ;  for  I  suppose  no 
man  ever  lived  who  did  so  much  to  make  the  cant  of  religion 
odious  and  loathsome. 

The  close  confinement  of  an  engraver's  office  soon  told 
upon  his  health ;  for  he  was  a  delicate  and  sensitive  boy. 
He  was  therefore  sent  to  a  relation  in  Scotland,  where  he 
remained  for  two  years  as  clerk  in  a  counting-room ;  and  it 
was  in  Scotland  that  he  first  began  to  write  for  the  public. 
Returning  to  London  in  his  twenty-second  year,  he  obtained 


LITERATURE THOMAS   HOOD.  259 

employment  in  the  office  of  a  magazine  as  proof-reader  and 
editorial  assistant.  He  began  forthwith  to  write  humorous 
contributions  for  this  periodical  in  prose  and  verse,  few  of 
which,  however,  have  been  thought  worthy  of  republicatiou. 
His  connection  with  this  magazine  made  him  a  literary  man 
for  life,  and  in  that  career  he  achieved,  at  length,  a  fame 
which  extended  as  far  as  the  English  language  is  known. 

At  twenty-five  he  married  that  admirable,  that  devoted, 
that  martyr  wife,  who  gave  herself  up  so  entirely  to  her  suf- 
fering husband,  and  upon  whose  cheering  presence  he  was 
at  last  so  dependent,  that  he  could  hardly  write  at  all  if  she 
were  not  near  him.  The  first  years  of  his  married  life  were 
happy  and  fortunate,  for  he  enjoyed  tolerable  health ;  he 
could  produce  salable  matter  with  astonishing  ease,  and  he 
had  a  sufficient  income. 

Ten  years  passed.  He  had  saved  some  money,  which  he 
invested  in  a  publishing  business,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  did  in 
the  great  Edinburgh  house  that  published  his  novels.  The 
firm  of  which  poor  Hood  was  a  silent  member  failed  in  1834, 
by  which  he  lost  all  that  he  had  saved,  and  was  plunged  into 
debt  His  friends  advised  him  to  avail  himself  of  the  Bank- 
rupt Act,  or  as  he  expressed  it,  to  "  score  off  his  debts  with 
legal  whitewash  or  a  wet  sponge."  But  he  chose  to  follow 
the  example  of  Scott,  and  resolved,  if  health  continued,  to 
discharge  his  obligations  by  honest  toil  in  his  profession. 
With  this  object  in  view,  he  removed  with  his  family  to 
Coblentz,  a  town  on  the  Rhine,  where  the  necessaries  of  life 
are  much  cheaper  than  in  England.  On  the  passage  over 
he  narrowly  escaped  shipwreck,  and  suffered  so  severely, 
that  his  delicate  constitution  never  recovered  the  strain. 

How  he  flew  at  his  task ;  how  patiently  he  toiled ;  how 
fearfully  he  suffered ;  with  what  indomitable  gayety  of  heart 
he  bore  his  daily  and  nightly  anguish ;  how  kind  he  was  as 


260  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTEKPKISE. 

father,  husband,  and  friend ;  how  tenderly  he  felt  for  the 
sorrows  of  the  poor  and  friendless  ;  how  nobly  he  toiled  in 
the  service  of  the  forlorn  and  afflicted ;  and  how,  while  he 
suffered,  he  enlivened  and  blessed  ten  thousand  homes  with 
his  honest,  cheerful,  and  innocent  writings,  cannot  here  be 
told.  The  story  of  his  life  has  never  been  related  as  it 
ought  to  have  been.  The  memorials  published  some  years 
ago  by  his  children  are  of  the  deepest  interest,  and  would 
almost  move  a  heart  of  stone  to  pity ;  but  we  feel  the  tale 
to  be  incomplete,  and  it  provokes  curiosity  rather  than  satis- 
fies it.  I  gather,  however,  a  few  traits  and  incidents  from  it. 
It  is  a  custom  in  Europe  to  construct  libraries  in  such  a 
way  that  the  doors  and  windows  are  not  visible,  so  that  the 
student  may  feel  himself  hemmed  in  on  every  side  by 
books,  and  not  be  tempted  to  wander  forth  before  his  task 
is  done.  As  there  must  be  a  way  of  getting  in  and  out, 
the  doors  are  so  contrived  as  to  resemble  perfectly  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  book-shelves,  and  on  the  backs  of  the  imag- 
inary books  are  stamped  such  fanciful  titles  as  the  inge- 
nuity of  the  owner  can  devise ;  as  "  Essays  on  Wood," 
"  Perpetual  Motion,"  and  others.  Hood  being  requested  by 
the  Duke  of  Devonshire  to  furnish  a  number  of  such  titles, 
he  contributed  a  great  number,  of  which  the  following  are 
specimens :  — 

"  The  Life  of  Zimmerman  (author  of  a  work  on  Solitude) .  By 
Himself."  "  The  Racing  Calendar,  with  the  Eclipses  for  1831." 
"Percy  Vere,  in  forty  volumes."  "Lamb  on  the  Death  of 
Wolfe."  "  Tadpoles,  or  Tales  out  of  My  Own  Head."  "  On 
Trial  by  Jury,  with  remarkable  Packing  Cases."  "  Mac  Adam's 
Views  in  Rhodes."  "  Boyle  on  Steam."  "  John  Knox  on  Death's 
Door."  "  Designs  for  Friezes,  by  Captain  Parry."  "  Peel  on 
Bell's  System."  "  Life  of  Jack  Ketch,  with  Cuts  of  His  own 
Execution."  "  Barrow  on  the  Common  Weal."  "  Cursory 


LITERATURE — THOMAS   HOOD.  261 

Remarks  on  Swearing."  "  Recollections  of  Bannister,  by  Lord 
Stair."  "  The  Sculpture  of  the  Chipaway  Indians."  "  Cook's 
Specimens  of  the  Sandwich  Tongue."  "In-i-go  on  Secret 
Entrances." 

The  Duke  might  well  reply  as  he  did:  "I  am  more 
obliged  to  you  than  I  can  say  for  my  titles.  They  are 
exactly  what  I  wanted,  and  are  invented  in  that  remarka- 
ble vein  of  humor  which  has,  in  your  works,  caused  me 
and  many  of  my  friends  so  much  amusement  and  satisfac- 
tion." 

It  was  dangerous  to  make  Hood  the  butt  of  a  joke,  for 
he  was  most  ingenious  at  a  retort,  whether  verbal  or  prac- 
tical. Some  friends  one  day,  who  were  fishing  with  him  in 
a  small  boat  near  his  cottage,  contrived  to  give  the  boat 
such  a  push  as  to  throw  him  into  the  water.  Upon  coming 
out  dripping  he  made  light  of  the  mishap ;  but  soon  began 
to  complain  of  various  cramps  and  pains,  and  at  last  went 
into  the  house  apparently  suffering  a  good  deal.  His  jovial 
friends  became  serious,  and  persuaded  him  to  go  to  bed, 
which  he  did.  As  soon  as  he  was  within  the  sheets,  he 
began  to  groan  and  writhe  in  the  most  alarming  manner,  to 
the  infinite  distress  of  his  comrades.  The  nearest  doctor 
lived  some  miles  distant,  and  meanwhile  the  patient,  shak- 
ing with  suppressed  laughter,  appeared  to  those  around  him 
seized  with  the  most  violent  ague.  One  rushed  for  a  tea- 
kettle of  boiling  water,  another  brought  in  a  large  tin  bath ; 
and  a  third  employed  himself  in  getting  the  materials  for  a 
mustard  plaster.  At  last  the  patient  pretended  to  be  dying, 
and  began  in  a  hollow  voice  to  give  directions  with  regard 
to  his  will.  His  friends,  penetrated  with  horror,  implored 
him  to  forgive  them  for  their  fatal  joke,  and  begged  him  to 
believe  in  the  depth  and  sincerity  of  their  remorse.  Upon 
this,  Hood  could  restrain  himself  no  longer,  but  burst  into 


262  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

a  perfect  roar  of  laughter,  which  the  horrified  by-standers 
regarded  as  delirium.  This  time,  however,  the  laughter 
was  too  natural  to  deceive  them  long,  and  they  were  soon 
all  roaring  in  concert  around  the  bedside. 

The  city  of  Cologne  in  those  days  was  paved  with  cobble- 
stones, even  to  the  sidewalks,  as  New  York  used  to  be  when 
it  was  a  Dutch  town.  As  Hood  and  his  wife  were  hobbling 
along,  he  said  it  looked  as  though  there  had  been  a  stone 
storm,  and  that  if  a  certain  place  was  paved  with  good  inten- 
tions, Cologne  must  have  been  paved  with  the  bad  ones. 

When  they  were  living  in  Germany,  Mrs.  Hood  volun- 
teered to  make  an  English  plum-pudding  for  some  of  the 
officers  of  the  garrison  of  Coblentz.  Hood  was  writing  late 
at  night,  when  the  servant  took  the  pudding  out  of  the  pot, 
and  put  it  smoking  on  a  table  near  him.  She  then  went  to 
bed,  and  left  him  alone  with  the  savory  object.  The  spirit 
of  mischief  seized  him.  There  was  a  large  quantity  of  new 
wooden  skewers  lying  about,  which  he  proceeded  to  thrust 
into  the  pudding  in  every  direction,  and  did  it  so-  neatly  that 
the  pudding  presented  no  visible  sign  of  the  mischief  that 
had  been  done  to  it.  In  the  morning  it  was  conveyed  to 
the  officers'  mess,  where  it  figured  upon  their  table  at  din- 
ner ;  and  in  the  evening  one  of  them  came  to  thank  Mrs. 
Hood  for  the  gift.  When  the  officer  arrived,  the  lady  was 
not  present,  and  he  began  to  pour  forth  the  admiration  and 
gratitude  of  the  officers  to  her  mischievous  husband. 

"  Don't  you  think  it  was  well  trussed  ?"  asked  Hood. 

To  this  the  officer  replied,  "Yes,"  so  simply  and  gravely, 
that  Hood  supposed  they  meditated  a  joke  in  retaliation,  and 
kept  a  bright  lookout  upon  the  parties  concerned.  Days 
passed,  and  nothing  happened.  He  discovered  at  length,  by 
accident,  that  the  Prussian  officers,  totally  ignorant  of  the 
nature  of  plum-pudding,  supposed  that  the  skewers  were  a 


UTEKATURE  —  THOMAS  HOOD.  203 

proper  and  necessary  part  of  it,  and  it  was  not  until  some 
one  informed  them  to  the  contrary  that  they  became  aware 
that  a  joke  had  been  played  upon  them.  George  the  Third, 
we  know,  was  puzzled  to  account  for  the  presence  of  the 
apple  inside  of  a  dumpling ;  and  these  Prussians  were  no 
better  informed  respecting  the  nature  of  a  plum-pudding. 

He  made  a  remark  in  one  of  his  letters  from  Ostend, 
which  some  of  our  office-seekers  might  employ  if  their  appli- 
cations for  appointment  were  "founded  upon  fact." 

"  Why,"  said  he,  "  can't  the  Queen  make  me  consul  here? 
I  don't  want  to  turn  anybody  out;  but  can't  there  be 
nothing-to-do  enough  for  two?" 

He  said  once  that, there  was  a  family  living  near  him  that 
had  a  mile  of  daughters.  The  name  of  the  family  was  Fur- 
long, and  eight  of  them  were  daughters'  "  Eight  furlongs 
make  a  mile." 

When  Hood  was  ready  to  sink  under  his  burden,  poor  and 
sick,  earning  a  bare  subsistence  for  his  family  by  efforts  of 
almost  superhuman  endurance,  a  young  man,  little  more 
than  twenty-one,  soared  to  celebrity  and  wealth  by  the  exer- 
cise of  the  same  kind  of  talent  as  that  which  Hood  possessed. 
This  was  Charles  Dickens,  whose  Pickwick,  after  running 
three  or  four  months,  was  selling  at  the  rate  of  eighty  thou- 
sand a  number.  Hood  beheld  this  success,  not  only  without 
any  mean  repining,  but  with  generous  joy,  and  was  one  of 
the  keenest  appreciators  of  the  new  author.  The  editor  of 
the  "Athenaeum"  having  privately  asked  his  opinion  of 
Dickens,  Hood  gave  him  the  warmest  praise,  exulting  in 
the  talent  which  knew  how  to  recognize  and  exhibit  "  good 
in  low  places,  and  evil  in  high  ones." 

He  had  a  funny  habit  of  inserting  notes  and  comments  in 
his  wife's  letters  to  her  friends.  She  wrote  once,  "  Hood  is 
certainly  much  better  in  spite  of  all  his  drawbacks."  Upon 
which  he  inserted,  " Does  she  mean  blisters?  " 

17 


264  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Although  he  was  one  of  the  most  fertile  of  jesters,  he  did 
not  disdain  to  note  down  ideas  for  use  when  he  should  need 
them.  Among  his  papers  was  found  a  small  book,  in  which 
he  was  accustomed  to  put  down  rudimental  jokes,  like  the 
following :  — 

"  Some  men  pretend  to  penetration,  who  have  not  even  half-penny- 
tration."  "  A  quaker  loves  the  ocean  for  its  broadbrim."  "  If  three 
barley  corns  go  to  an  inch,  how  many  corns  go  to  a  foot?  Bun- 
yan  says  $hirty-six."  "  That  bantam  Mercury,  with  feathered 
heels."  "What  a  little  child !  Ah !  his  parents  never  made  much 
of  .him." 

As  his  life  was  ebbing  away,  he  wrote  several  notes  of 
farewell  to  his  more  distant  friends,  and  even  in  them  he 
could  not  refrain  from  the  exercise  of  his  fanciful  wit.  One 
of  these  notes  was  the  following :  — 

"  Dear  Moir  — God  bless  you  and  yours,  and  good-by !  I  drop 
these  few  lines  as  in  a  bottle  from  a  ship  water-logged  and  on  the 
brink  of  foundering,  being  in  the  last  stage  of  dropsical  debility. 
But  though  suffering  in  body,  serene  in  mind.  So  without  revers- 
ing my  Union  Jack,  I  await  my  last  lurch.  Till  which,  believe  me, 
dear  Moir,  yours  most  truly, 

"  THOMAS  HOOD." 

There  never  was  a  man  more  disposed  to  enjoy  and  make 
much  of  the  innocent  pleasures  of  this  world.  He  suffered 
extremely  during  his  last  sickness,  and  yet  the  sight  of  a 
flower,  or  the  streaming  in  of  the  sunlight,  would  often 
make  him  for  a  while  forget  his  pain.  He  said  to  his  chil- 
dren on  a  fine  spring  morning,  shortly  before  his  death  :  — 

"  It  >s  a  beautiful  world,  and  since  I  have  been  lying  here  I  have 
thought  of  it  more  and  more.  It  is  not  so  bad,  even  humanly 
speaking,  as  people  would  make  it  out.  I  have  had  some  very 


LITERATURE THOMAS   HOOD.  265 

happy  days  while  I  lived  in  it,  and  could  have  wished  to  stay  a 
little  longer.  But  it  is  all  for  the  best,  and  we  shall  all  meet  in  a 
better  world." 

His  last  verses,  published  in  the  last  number  of  his  maga- 
zine to  which  he  contributed,  were  these  :  — 

STANZAS. 

Farewell  Life !     My  senses  swim, 
And  all  the  world  is  growing  dim ; 
Thronging  shadows  cloud  the  light, 
Like  the  advent  of  the  night : 
Colder,  colder,  colder  still  — 
Upward  steals  a  vapor  chill — 
Strong  the  earthy  odor  grows, 
I  smell  the  mould  above  the  rose ! 

Welcome  Life !    The  spirit  strives ! 
Strength  returns,  and  hope  revives ; 
Cloudy  fears  and  shapes  forlorn 
Fly  like  shadows  at  the  morn ; 
O'er  the  earth  there  comes  a  bloom  — 
Sunny  light  for  sullen  gloom, 
Warm  perfume  for  vapors  cold  — 
I  smell  the  rose  above  the  mould ! 

He  died  in  1845,  aged  forty-six  years.  He  was  buried  in 
a  cemetery  near  London,  where  an  unusually  beautiful  and 
tasteful  monument  covers  his  remains,  to  the  erection  of 
which  a  prodigious  number  of  the  best  hearts  in  the  British 
Empire  contributed. 


THE  FIEST  BOSTOOTAN 


AND 


THE    FIEST    NEW-YOEKEE. 


IF  the  Mayflower  had  sailed  thirty  miles  farther  north  than 
she  did,  in  December,  1620,  she  would  have  come  to  a  spa- 
cious bay,  protected  from  the  waves  and  winds  of  the  ocean 
by  twenty  or  thirty  small  islands,  with  a  deep  channel 
between  them,  leading  to  a  harbor  safe,  deep,  and  conven- 
ient. At  the  bottom  of  this  bay,  the  Pilgrims  would  have 
found  a  peninsula,  long  and  narrow,  containing  about  seven 
hundred  acres,  connected  with  the  main  land  by  a  narrow 
neck  of  swampy  ground.  Upon  this  peninsula,  formed  by 
the  Charles  River,  the  illustrious  and  peculiar  city  of  Boston 
now  stands. 

The  Pilgrims  would  have  found  it  without  inhabitant,  and 
even  shorn  of  trees ;  and  thus,  as  one  of  the  settlers  re- 
marked, they  could  easily  have  been  protected  there  from 
their  three  worst  enemies,  "  Indians,  wolves  and  mosquitoes." 
The  Indian  name  of  this  commodious  site,  let  me  not  forget 
to  mention,  was  Shawmut.  A  pestilence  of  some  kind  had 
raged  among  the  Indians  all  along  that  coast,  a  few  years 
before,  and  carried  off  so  many  of  the  red  men,  that  the 
white  settlers  found  most  of  their  cleared  fields  wholly  un- 
occupied, and  many  of  their  ancient  seats  with  very  few 
inhabitants. 

It  is  of  the  first  white  inhabitant  of  this  peninsula,  —  the 
first  Bostonian,  the  first  individual  who  ever  revolved  at  the 
Hub  of  the  Universe,  that  I  am  to  say  a  few  words. 


268  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

What  sort  of  person  should  we  naturally  expect  the  first 
Bostonian  to  be?  Learned?  Of  course.  College  bred? 
By  all  means.  Eeligious?  Assuredly.  Heterodox  in  opin- 
ion? Certainly.  Firm  in  adhering  to  his  opinions,  even  to 
obstinacy?  Yes  ;  this,  too,  must  have  been  expected.  The 
first  inhabitant  of  Boston  did  really  unite  in  himself  all  the 
traits,  and  exhibited  in  his  life  all  the  peculiarities,  which 
the  world  would  naturally  look  for  in  the  original  Bostonian. 

His  name  was  William  Blackstone,  a  name  of  various 
renown  in  the  annals  of  Great  Britain.  After  graduating 
from  the  University  of  Cambridge  in  1617,  he  took  orders  in 
the  Church  of  England,  and  was  so  much  a  Conformist  in 
1621,  as  to  be  admitted  to  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts, 
without  hinderance  from  the  authorities  of  the  realm.  Nat- 
urally disposed  to  radicalism,  as  became  him,  considering 
the  destiny  in  store  for  him,  he  was  soon  ranked  among  the 
Puritans  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  finally  carried  his 
opposition  to  the  Bishops  so  far  as  to  reject  their  authority 
altogether.  He  may  have  been  silenced  by  them,  but  the 
probability  is  that  his  withdrawal  from  the  church  was  vol- 
untary. 

About  the  year  1623,  as  it  is  conjectured,  he  joined  a  party 
of  Episcopalian  Puritans,  under  a  son  of  Sir  Ferdinando 
Gorges,  and  emigrated  to  a  plantation  on  the  New-England 
coast,  called  Wessagusset,  twelve  miles  southeast  of  Boston, 
now  called  Weymouth.  He  was  a  man  who  had  in  his  com- 
position peculiarities  which  made  it  difficult  or  disagreeable 
for  him  to  live  with  other  men;  and  soon  after  reaching 
America,  he  went  off  by  himself,  and  travelled  along  the 
coast  until  he  came  to  the  peninsula  of  Shawmut  just 
described.  At  the  end  of  the  peninsula  he  found  the 
remains  of  a  hut,  of  which  he  took  possession,  and  slept  in 
it  one  night.  Upon  examining  the  site,  he  approved  its 


THE  FIRST  BOSTONIAN  AND  THE  FIRST  NEW-YORKER.     269 

loneliness  and  security;  built  a  log  cabin  on  a  point  near 
the  shore ;  brought  thither  his  books  and  his  furniture,  and 
there  established  his  home. 

He  had  one  neighbor  a  mile  or  two  off,  upon  the  land  on 
which  Charlestown  now  stands.  There  were  a  few  persons 
upon  Cape  Ann,  thirty  miles  distant.  Wessagusset  was  not 
yet  abandoned  perhaps,  and  the  colony  at  Plymouth  was 
striking  root  into  its  sandy  soil.  With  these  exceptions, 
there  were  no  white  inhabitants  then  upon  the  whole  coast 
of  New  England,  and  none  between  New  England  and  Vir- 
ginia, except  a  few  Dutchmen  on  Manhattan  Island.  There, 
however,  he  lived  contentedly  enough,  and  created  around 
him  a  considerable  farm.  He  possessed  a  large  number  of 
books  for  that  day,  —  a  hundred  and  eighty-six  volumes,  it  is 
said,  —  some  of  them  learned  folios  in  Latin,  brought  with 
him  perhaps  from  Cambridge. 

When  he  had  lived  there  five  years,  the  population  of  the 
whole  of  Massachusetts  was  not  more  than  three  hundred. 
But  in  1630,  Governor  Winthrop  arrived  at  Salem,  and  a  great 
fleet  with  him,  containing  seven  or  eight  hundred  colonists. 
Two  or  three  hundred  more  arrived  soon  after,  and  before 
the  year  closed,  another  thousand,  —  swelling  the  population 
of  the  colony  to  twenty-three  hundred.  There  being  too 
many  people  for  the  cleared  lands  about  Salem,  a  portion  of 
the  hive,  as  Cotton  Mather  remarks,  were  obliged  to  swarm. 
Governor  Winthrop  removed,  and  led  a  company  to  the  site 
of  Charlestown,  where  he  began  to  build  a  large  house, 
intending  to  make  that  the  principal  town  and  seat  of  gov- 
ernment. Before  the  winter  set  in,  however,  sickness  broke 
out  among  the  emigrants  at  this  place,  of  which  many  died. 

"In  almost  every  family,"  wrote  one  of  them,  "lamenta- 
tion, mourning,  and  woe  was  heard,  and  no  fresh  food  to  be 
had  to  cherish  them.  .  .  .  And  that  which  added  to  their 


270  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

present  distress  was  the  want  of  fresh  water ;  for,  although 
the  place  did  afford  plenty,  yet,  for  the  present  they  could 
find  but  one  spring,  and  that  not  to  be  come  at  but  when  the 
tide  was  down." 

This  circumstance  led  to  the  founding  of  the  city  of  Bos- 
ton. 

The  home  of  William  Blackstone  was  separated  from  the 
new  settlement  only  by  the  Charles  River ;  for  his  log  cabin 
was  on  a  point  which  extended  into  that  stream.  He  heard 
of  the  distress,  and,  crossing  over  the  Charles,  told  the  gov- 
ernor that  there  was  an  excellent  spring  of  water  near  his 
house,  and  urged  him  to  remove  to  his  peninsula.  The 
governor  accepted  his  invitation,  and,  liking  the  place, 
planted  his  settlement  upon  it,  and  removed  thither  the 
frame  of  his  house,  partly  prepared  in  Charlestown.  He 
built  his  house  on  land,  a  corner  of  which  is  now  occupied 
by  the  Old  South  Church.  The  entry  of  this  interesting 
remnant,  in  the  Eecords  of  Charlestown,  closes  with  the  fol- 
lowing words :  — 

"  The  governor,  with  Mr.  Wilson,  and  the  greatest  part  of  the 
churqh,  removed  thither  ;  whither,  also,  the  frame  of  the  governor's 
house,  in  preparation  at  this  town,  was  also  —  to  the  discontent  of 
some  —  carried :  where  people  began  to  build  their  houses  against 
winter ;  and  THIS  PLACE  WAS  CALLED  BOSTON." 

It  was  so  named,  partly  because  a  good  number  of  the 
emigrants  were  natives  of  Boston  in  England ;  but  chiefly, 
perhaps,  in  honor  of  the  Rev.  John  Cotton,  for  many  years 
rector  of  the  church  at  English  Boston,  whom  they  expected 
soon  to  come  out  and  be  their  minister  in  the  Boston  of  New 
England. 

It  was  certainly  a  kind  and  neighborly  act  in  William 
Blackstone,  to  make  the  governor  acquainted  with  his  excel- 


THE  FIRST  BOSTONIAN  AND  THE  FIRST  NEW- YORKER.     271 

leut  spring  of  water,  and  to  invite  so  large  a  company  over 
to  share  the  safety  and  convenience  of  his  peninsula.  But 
he  soon  had  cause  to  regret  this  act  of  good-nature.  He 
claimed  the  whole  peninsula  as  his  property,  on  the  ground 
that,  finding  it  vacant,  he  had  taken  possession  of  it,  and, 
first  of  all  white  men,  slept  within  its  borders.  The  claim, 
although  not  good  in  law,  had  some  ground  in  right,  and  the 
town  therefore  presented  him  with  a  tract  of  fifty  acres 
about  his  house,  to  be  his  own  forever.  This  affair  settled, 
another  difficulty  arose.  No  man  could  hold  office  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  no  man  was  reckoned  of  much  account 
there,  nor,  indeed,  could  be  long  welcome,  unless  he  was  a 
member  of  the  church.  William  Blackstone  could  not 
conscientiously  join  the  church  of  Boston,  nor  did  he 
relish  the  union  of  church  and  state  that  existed  in  the 
colony. 

"I  came  from  England,"  said  he,  " because  I  did  not  like 
the  Lord  Bishops ;  but  I  can't  join  with  you,  because  I  would 
not  be  under  the  Lord  Brethren." 

So,  in  the  spring  of  1635,  having  sold  his  land  for  thirty 
pounds  sterling,  and  bought  a  number  of  cows  with  the 
money,  he  removed  to  a  place  thirty-five  miles  south  of 
Boston,  which  is  now  the  town  of  Cumberland,  in  Rhode 
Island.  Here,  on  the  banks  of  a  beautiful  river,  since  named 
Blackstone  River,  after  himself,  he  built  a  new  home,  and 
cleared  a  new  farm,  planted  another  garden,  and  set  out 
another  orchard ;  arranged  his  books  anew,  and  resumed  the 
tranquil  life  of  study  and  labor,  which  the  coming  of  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop  and  his  friends  had  interrupted.  Many 
years  passed  before  he  had  any  near  neighbors. 

It  seems  that  he  grew  weary  of  his  solitude  at  last ;  for 
when  he  had  lived  on  the  Blackstone  River  for  twenty-four 
years,  he  made  a  journey  to  Boston,  married,  and  took  his  wife 


272  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

home  with  him  to  his  retreat.  He  lived  sixteen  years  after 
this  event;  and  dying  in  1675,  past  eighty,  left  a  son  not 
yet  of  age.  A  few  weeks  after  his  death,  the  Indian  war, 
commonly  called  King  Philip's  war,  broke  out ;  in  the  course 
of  which  a  party  of  Indians  burnt  his  house  and  his  precious 
collection  of  ancient  books. 

His  farm  is  still  occasionally  visited  by  antiquaries  and 
students  of  history.  One  who  did  so  twenty  years  ago, 
found  the  old  man's  well  still  in  existence,  with  the  stoning 
in  good  condition,  very  much  as  Blackstone  left  it.  The 
cellar  of  his  house  was  then  plainly  to  be  seen,  as  well  as  his 
lonely  grave  on  the  side  of  an  eminence  still  called  Study 
Hill.  Two  rude  gravestones,  one  at  the  head  and  one  at  the 
foot,  mark  the  spot  where  reposes  the  dust  of  the  first  Bos- 
tonian. 

Strange  to  say,  the  first  white  inhabitant  of  Manhattan  Isl- 
and was  a  character  as  prophetic  of  the  practical  and  enter- 
prising New  Yorker,  as  William  Blackstone  was  of  the  book- 
loving  and  difficult-to-get-along-with  Bostonian  Radical. 

The  first  houses  ever  erected  by  white  men  upon  Manhat- 
tan Island  were  built  in  the  year  1613,  and  the  spot  upon 
which  they  stood  is  in  the  lower  part  of  Broadway,  nearly 
on  the  site  of  No.  39.  It  was  that  worthy  Dutch  mariner, 
Adrian  Block,  who  took  the  liberty  of  establishing  himself 
on  the  extremely  valuable  lot  in  Broadway  just  named.  I 
sometimes  wish  that  he  had  selected  Staten  Island,  or  the 
shores  of  Long  Island,  or  some  other  place  on  the  bay  where 
the  future  city  would  not  have  been  cramped  between  two 
broad  and  deep  rivers,  so  much  to  the  inconvenience  of  those 
who  are  obliged,  every  morning  and  evening,  to  ride  in  our 
crowded  cars  and  ferry-boats.  But  far  indeed  was  honest 
Adrian  Block  from  foreseeing  the  Third  Avenue  railroad, 


THE  FIKST  BOSTONIAN  AND  THE  FIRST  NEW-YORKER.     273 

the  Fulton  ferry,  or  even  the  Knickerbocker  line  of  stages. 
The  Dutch  were  an  enterprising  people  in  that  age.  It 
was  in  December,  1609,  that  the  news  reached  Amsterdam 
of  Henry  Hudson's  discovery  of  a  great  river  in  North 
America,  the  shores  of  which  swarmed  with  inhabitants  and 
abounded  in  fur-bearing  animals.  So  prompt  were  they  to 
improve  the  opportunity  of  a  profitable  trade,  that  in  the 
July  following  a  vessel  was  despatched  thither  from  Amster- 
dam, commanded  by  Hudson's  Dutch  mate,  and  manned  in 
part  by  the  Dutchmen  of  his  crew.  Nothing  is  known  of 
the  results  of  this  voyage,  though  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  the  vessel  returned  to  Holland  with  a  profitable  cargo. 
There  is  a  tradition  that  the  Indians  were  very  glad  to  see 
the  white  men  among  them  once  more ;  from  which  I  infer 
that  this  vessel  must  have  gone  high  up  the  river,  where 
Captain  Hudson  found  the  red  men  friendly,  and  too  willing 
to  drink  his  brandy  and  wine. 

From  this  time  forward,  I  believe,  there  was  no  year  in 
which  at  least  one  Dutch  vessel  did  not  enter  our  bay  to 
trade  with  the  Indians.  Probably  no  part  of  North  America 
was  so  prolific  of  fur-bearing  animals  as  the  shores  of  the 
Hudson  River,  and  the  country  beyond  them,  —  diversified,  as 
it  was,  with  mountains  and  plains,  and  densely  covered  with 
the  noble  trees  of  the  primeval  wilderness.  Even  within  my 
recollection,  bears  have  been  shot  in  the  Catskill  Mountains ; 
and  as  late  as  the  year  1790,  the  sloop-masters  of  the  Hud- 
son used  to  bring  in  from  its  upper  waters  considerable  quan- 
tities of  skins,  more  or  less  valuable.  For  a  century  or 
more  after  the  city  was  founded,  beaver-skins  occasionally 
served  as  money,  and  were  constantly  referred  to  as  a  stand- 
ard of  value.  From  such  facts  we  may  gather  some  notion 
of  the  valuable  freights  which  must  have  been  collected  by 
the  Dutch  navigators,  when  those  beautiful  shores  were  a 


274  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

wilderness,  with  Indians  enough  to  hunt  and  trap  them,  who 
had  not  yet  learned  the  value  of  what  they  sold. 

Adrian  Block,  who  may  in  some  sense  be  called  the  foun- 
der of  the  city  of  New  York,  was  a  brave  and  enterprising 
navigator,  who  had  won  distinction  in  the  service  of  the 
great  Dutch  merchants,  then  the  wealthiest  in  Europe. 
Coming  home  to  Holland  in  1611,  and  finding  the  new  lands 
discovered  by  Henry  Hudson  the  great  topic  of  the  year, 
he  joined  a  friend  in  chartering  a  vessel,  in  which  both  of 
the  adventurers  sailed  for  the  Hudson  Eiver.  They  brought 
back  with  them,  not  only  a  profitable  cargo  of  furs,  but  two 
young  Indians,  whom  they  named  Valentine  and  Orson. 
As  these  were  the  first  Indians  ever  brought  to  Holland,  they 
attracted  great  attention,  and  gave  an  important  impulse  to 
Dutch  commercial  enterprise.  Many  people  suppose  that 
enthusiasm  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  investing  of  money, 
but  the  daily  experience  of  our  bankers  and  brokers  proves 
the  contrary ;  and  it  appears  that  the  presence  in  Amsterdam 
of  these  Indians  had  almost  as  much  to  do  in  stimulating  the 
enterprise  of  merchants,  as  the  prospect  of  obtaining  valuable 
returns. 

Three  merchants  of  Amsterdam  now  united  for  the  pur- 
pose of  trade  with  the  Indians  of  the  Hudson  Eiver,  or,  as 
they  called  it,  the  river  Mauritius.  Two  vessels  were  made 
ready,  one  named  the  Fortune,  and  the  other  the  Tiger. 
The  Fortune  was  commanded  by  Block's  old  comrade  and 
partner,  Christiaensen.  Captain  Block  took  command  of 
the  Tiger,  and  in  the  summer  of  1613,  both  sailed  in  com- 
pany for  the  New  World.  Other  small  vessels  followed,  as 
many  as  three  or  four ;  and  the  harbor  of  New  York  soon 
exhibited  a  little  fleet  of  vessels,  which  penetrated  the  neigh- 
boring creeks  and  bays,  ascended  the  river,  threaded  the 
Kills,  explored  the  Karitan,  and  gathered  abundant  cargoes 
of  valuable  furs  at  small  expense. 


THE  FIRST  BOSTONIAN  AKT>  THE  FIRST  NEW-YORKER.     275 

Before  the  autumn  of  1613  was  far  advanced,  these  vessels 
returned  richly  laden  to  Holland  —  all  except  one,  the  Tiger, 
commanded  by  Adrian  Block.  One  day,  while  this  vessel 
lay  anchored  near  the  shore  of  Manhattan  Island, — say 
about  pier  No.  4,  North  River  — she  caught  fire,  and  was 
burned  to  the  water's  edge. 

Now  Captain  Block  had  a  rare  opportunity  to  show  his 
quality.  Undaunted  by  his  calamity,  he  established  himself 
on  the  island,  and  determined  to  spend  the  winter  in  building 
another  vessel,  using  for  the  purpose  the  iron  of  the  burnt 
Tiger,  and  such  parts  of  her  as  had  been  saved.  It  was  a 
valiant  and  high-spirited  resolution;  for  the  Indians  of 
Manhattan  were  numerous  and  warlike,  and  there  was  not  a 
white  man  on  the  coast,  besides  his  own  company,  between 
Virginia  and  Canada.  The  Dutch,  however,  had  conciliated 
that  troublesome  tribe  by  fair  dealing,  and  they  proved 
very  helpful  and  friendly  to  Captain  Block  in  his  misfor- 
tune. 

Manhattan  Island,  little  as  we  should  think  it  now,  was 
then  one  of  the  most  beautiful  islands  in  the  world.  Along 
both  rivers  there  were  lofty  and  picturesque  bluffs  ;  and  the 
interior,  besides  being  agreeably  diversified  with  hill  and 
dale,  was  dotted  with  ponds  and  lakes,  remarkably  clear  and 
deep,  and  beautifully  fringed  with  virgin  green.  A  few  deer 
were  still  left  upon  the  island,  notwithstanding  the  incessant 
hunting  of  the  Indians.  Some  rabbits  and  goats  had  been 
brought  over  from  Holland ;  but  soon  after  being  brought  on 
shore  they  were  poisoned  by  some  plant  which  grew  among 
the  herbage. 

But  what  best  pleased  Captain  Block  was,  that  nearly  the 
whole  surface  of  the  island  was  covered  with  noble  trees, 
admirably  suited  to  his  purpose  of  building  a  vessel.  Near 
the  lower  extremity  of  the  island,  between  Trinity  Church 


276  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

and  Bowling  Green,  he  built  a  few  huts,  and  began  forthwith 
to  build  his  vessel.  Through  all  that  long  winter  he  and  his 
men  kept  steadily  at  work,  the  Indians  bringing  daily  sup- 
plies of  food  and  whatever  else  they  had  which  could  be  of 
use. 

He  accomplished  his  purpose.  By  the  time  the  vessels 
from  Holland  began  to  arrive,  in  the  spring  of  1614,  he  had 
his  vessel  finished.  She  was  a  yacht,  forty-four  and  a  half 
feet  long,  eleven  and  a  half  feet  wide,  decked,  and  of  sixteen 
tons  burden.  If  Adrian  Block  cannot  properly  be  called  the 
founder  of  New  York,  we  can  at  least  claim  for  him  that  ho 
was  its  first  ship-builder.  His  vessel,  which  he  named  the 
Restless,  was  the  second  launched  in  North  America,  the  first 
having  been  built  in  Maine  by  the  colony  which  passed  a  win- 
ter there  seven  years  before. 

Captain  Block  no  sooner  had  his  little  craft  rigged  and 
ready  for  sea,  than  he  set  out  on  a  voyage  of  discovery  in 
the  waters  of  the  coast.  He,  first  of  all  white  men,  braved 
the  perils  of  Hell  Gate ;  which  was  so  named  by  Captain  Block 
himself  after  a  similar  turbulent  stream  in  Zealand  called  the 
Hellegat.  Having  reached  Long  Island  Sound,  he  explored 
its  northern  shore,  discovered  the  Housatonic  River,  passed 
by  the  bay  upon  which  New  Haven  now  stands,  and  arrived  at 
last  at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut.  This  river  he  ascended 
as  far  as  the  site  of  Hartford,  visiting  the  Indian  tribes  on  its 
shores,  from  whom  he  learned  that  the  Indian  name  of  the 
river  was  Connittecock,  which  has  been  corrupted  to  Con- 
necticut. 

Descending  the  river,  he  continued  the  voyage  eastward, 
and  discovered  the  river  Thames ;  and  crossing  the  Sound, 
went  ashore  on  Montauk  Point.  Recrossing  to  the  main 
land,  he  visited  the  island,  six  or  eight  miles  in  extent, 
which  to  this  day  retains  the  name  then  given  it,  —  Block 


THE  FIRST  BOSTONIAN  AND  THE  FIRST  NEW-TORKER.     277 

Island.  Next  he  penetrated  Narragansett  Bay,  which  he 
ascended  as  far  as  the  heights  upon  which  Providence  DOW 
stands,  and  explored  all  its  islands  and  shores.  An  island 
near  the  mouth  of  the  bay  he  named  Eoode  Island,  from  the 
red  color  of  the  soil,  Roode  being  the  Dutch  word  for  red. 
Roode  Island  was  changed  by  the  English  into  Rhode  Island, 
and  this  name  was  finally  given  to  the  whole  province. 
Continuing  his  course,  he  visited  Martha's  Vineyard,  Nan- 
tucket,  Cape  Cod,  Nahant,  and  indeed  every  prominent 
island  and  point  between  Boston  and  New  York,  carefully 
noting  and  recording  every  object. 

When  he  had  reached  Cape  Cod,  on  his  return  to  Manhat- 
tan, he  discovered  a  sail  in  the  distance,  which  proved  to  be 
the  ship  of  his  former  partner,  Christiaensen.  He  went  on 
board,  and  concluded  to  return  in  her  to  Holland,  and  leave 
the  little  Restless  to  explore  the  coast  farther,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  company  and  future  mariners.  Upon  reaching 
Amsterdam,  he  reported  his  discoveries  to  the  merchants, 
who  listened  to  them  with  the  greatest  interest,  since  they 
learned  from  them  the  real  value  and  importance  of  the 
Dutch  possessions  in  America.  An  artist  was  employed  to 
draw  an  elaborate  map  from  Captain  Block's  notes  and 
explanations.  This  map  exists  at  the  present  day,  a  witness 
to  the  enterprise  and  fidelity  of  the  navigator  whose  dis- 
coveries it  records. 

The  company  of  merchants  deputed  some  of  their  number 
to  go  with  Captain  Block  to  the  Hague,  to  report  his  voyage 
and  exhibit  his  map  to  their  High  Mightinesses,  the  States 
General.  In  a  magnificent  apartment,  around  the  counsel 
table,  sat  the  twelve  great  lords  who  governed  the  country, 
and  upon  the  table  was  spread  the  map  of  Captain  Block, 
while  one  of  the  merchants  related  his  adventures,  detailed 
their  own  expenditures,  and  asked  an  exclusive  license  to 


278  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

trade  with  the  regions  which  their  capital  and  enterprise  had 
revealed.  Their  petition  was  granted  without  delay.  The 
country  was  named  New  JSTetherland,  and  to  the  company  of 
Amsterdam  merchants  was  granted  the  exclusive  privilege 
of  trading  thither.  The  very  memorandum  or  outline  of 
this  charter,  written  hastily  at  the  time  by  the  Secretary, 
has  been  preserved,  although  now  not  legible. 

Captain  Adrian  Block,  at  this  interesting  moment,  van- 
ishes from  the  history  of  the  New  World.  He  never  again 
trod  the  beautiful  island  of  Manhattan,  nor  enjoyed  a  yacht- 
ing cruise  on  the  sparkling  waters  of  Long  Island  Sound, 
nor  glided  about  among  the  emerald  isles  which  gem  the 
coast  of  Massachusetts.  An  enterprising  merchant  of 
Amsterdam,  knowing  the  value  of  the  man,  engaged  him  in 
the  service  of  a  fishing  company,  and  sent  him  to  command 
a  fleet  employed  in  the  whale  fishery  in  the  Arctic  Ocean.  I 
hope  he  prospered  in  this  vocation. 


y  Brady 


^WC 


THE  FOUNDERS  OF  THE 

LITERATUBE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


IRVING,  COOPER,  BRYANT. 

FOR  a  generation  these  three  —  Washington  Irving,  James 
Fenimore  Cooper,  and  William  Cull  en  Bryant — were  the 
only  names  which  America  had  given  to  the  literature  of  the 
world.  The  poet  was  born  a  literary  man;  he  "lisped  in 
numbers  "  ;  he  was  famous  before  he  was  out  of  short  jack- 
ets. But  Cooper  appears  to  have  fallen  upon  literature  by 
accident,  and  Irving  to  have  been  drawn  into  it  by  necessity 
as  much  as  inclination.  Irving  was  the  first  to  acquire  gen- 
eral reputation. 

Before  the  Revolutionary  war,  there  used  to  be  a  line  of 
small  packet-ships  plying  between  New  York,  and  a  seaport 
in  the  south  of  England  named  Falmouth. 

The  father  of  Washington  Irving  was  a  mate  in  one  of 
these  packets.  He  was  a  native  of  one  of  the  Orkney 
Islands,  and  after  his  mother's  death  went  to  sea  before  the 
mast,  and  was  a  sailor  in  the  packet  service  until  his  good 
conduct  and  seamanship  led  to  his  promotion.  Soon  after 
this  event  he  married  the  girl  of  his  heart,  with  whom  he  had 
become  acquainted  when  on  shore  at  Falmouth.  A  year  or 
two  after  their  marriage  they  sailed  for  New  York,  where 
they  arrived  in  1763,  the  year  of  the  peace  between  France 
and  England. 

There  are  two  houses  now  in  the  city  which  were  standing 
when  William  Irving  and  Sarah  his  wife  reached  these 

18 


280  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

western  shores  in  1763.  One  was  the  Walton  House,  in 
Pearl  street,  and  the  other  is  the  old  Dutch  Church,  now 
used  as  the  post-office. 

In  New  York,  Mr.  Irving  went  into  business,  and  was  a 
moderately  prosperous  man  when  the  Revolutionary  war 
drove  him  from  the  city,  and  he  fled  to  Rahway,  in  New 
Jersey.  Finding  himself  there  an  object  of  persecution  by 
the  English  officers,  he  returned  to  New  York,  where  he 
resumed  his  business,  and  was  noted  for  his  liberality  toward 
the  American  prisoners  confined  in  the  prison-ships  and 
elsewhere.  In  1783,  eight  months  before  the  evacuation  of 
the  city,  in  William  Street,  Washington  Irving,  the  eleventh 
and  youngest  child  of  his  parents,  was  born. 

He  was  named  after  the  victorious  General  Washington, 
whom  he  may  have  seen  with  his  baby  eyes  marching  into 
the  city  on  Evacuation  Day,  November  twenty-fifth,  1783. 
The  hand  of  Washington  once  rested  upon  his  head.  A 
Scotch  servant  girl  who  had  him  in  charge  one  day,  when  he 
was  about  three  years  old,  followed  General  Washington 
into  a  shop,  and  thus  addressed  the  Father  of  his  Country 
"Please  your  honor,  here's  a  bairn  was  named  after  you.' 
Washington  placed  his  hand  upon  the  head  of  the  boy,  and 
gave  him  the  usual  benediction. 

Except  Columbia  College,  the  only  means  of  education 
which  the  city  then  furnished  were  small  private  schools, 
kept  by  persons  more  or  less  competent ;  and  at  these  the 
boy  received  that  small  portion  of  his  education  which  he  die 
not  acquire  by  his  own  unassisted  efforts.  He  was  an  affec- 
tionate, merry  lad,  and  a  great  reader  from  early  childhood 
From  his  eleventh  year  he  was  passionately  fond  of  reading 
voyages  and  travels,  a  little  library  of  which  was  within  his 
reach,  and  he  used  to  secrete  caudles  to  enable  him  to  reac 
these  transporting  works  in  bed. 


LITERATURE   OF   THE    UNITED   STATES.  281 

The  persual  of  such  books  gave  him  a  strong  desire  to  go 
to  sea,  and  at  fourteen  he  had  almost  made  up  his  mind  to 
run  away  and  be  a  sailor.  But  there  was  a  difficulty  in  the 
way.  He  had  a  particular  aversion  to  salt  pork,  which  he 
endeavored  to  overcome  by  eating  it  at  every  opportunity. 
He  also  endeavored  to  accustom  himself  to  a  hard  bed  by 
sleeping  on  the  floor  of  his  room.  Fortunately  for  the  infant 
literature  of  his  country,  the  pork  grew  more  disgusting 
instead  of  less,  and  the  hard  floor  became  harder,  until  he 
gave  up  his  purpose  of  trying  a  sailor's  life. 

At  sixteen  he  left  school  and  entered  a  law  office,  and  he 
continued  the  study  of  the  law  until  he  was  admitted  to  the 
bar.  Ill  health  at  first,  and  a  love  of  literature  afterwards, 
prevented  him  from  practising  the  profession  of  law  with  any 
benefit  to  himself,  although  he  was  occasionally  employed  as 
junior  counsel  in  important  cases.  He  was  one  of  the  half 
dozen  lawyers  engaged  to  defend  Aaron  Burr  at  Richmond 
against  the  charge  of  treason,  but  took  no  public  part  in  the 
case. 

In  1802,  his  brother,  Dr.  Peter,  established  in  New  York 
a  daily  paper,  called  "The  Morning  Chronicle."  Dr. 
Irving  was  assisted  in  this  enterprise  by  Aaron  Burr,  then 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  and  the  main  object  of 
the  paper  was  to  defend  Burr  against  his  political  opponents, 
who  had  then  become  numerous  and  powerful.  A  few  weeks 
after  the  first  number  of  the  "  Chronicle  "  appeared,  Washing- 
ton Irving,  then  nineteen  years  of  age,  began  to  contribute 
to  it  a  series  of  satirical  essays,  signed  Jonathan  Oldstyle, 
which  Colonel  Burr  and  his  fellow-citizens  generally  thought 
were  "very  good  for  so  young  a  man."  This  was  the 
beginning  of  Washington  Irving's  long  and  splendid  literary 
career.  He  continued  to  write  occasionally  for  the  "  Chroni- 
cle," winning  considerable  local  reputation,  until  the  dis- 


282  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

astrous  termination  of  Burr's  political  career  put  an  end  to 
the  existence  of  his  organ ;  which  occurred,  I  think,  soon 
after  the  duel  with  Hamilton  in  1804. 

Irving  was  then  twenty-one  years  of  age.  His  health 
was  extremely  delicate,  and  there  was  a  sad  prospect  of  his 
early  filling  a  consumptive's  grave.  His  family  sent  him 
abroad  to  spend  a  year  or  two  in  the  south  of  Europe,  and 
as  he  was  going  on  board  ship,  the  captain  said  to  him- 
self: "There's  a  chap  who  will  go  overboard  before  we  get 
across." 

But  he  did  not.  He  gained  strength  as  he  neared  the 
European  shore,  and  under  the  influence  of  leisurely  travel 
in  the  pleasant  climates  of  Southern  Europe,  he  began  to  gain 
something  of  that  robustness  of  body  and  ruddiness  of  com- 
plexion which  many  of  us  remember.  At  Rome  he  was 
strongly  tempted  to  turn  painter ;  and  it  was  there  also  that 
he  was  the  recipient  of  attentions  more  flattering  than  he 
could  account  for  until  just  as  he  was  going  away. 

"Tell  me,  sir,"  said  a  great  Roman  banker,  who  had  paid 
him  particular  honor,  "  are  you  a  relative  of  General  Wash- 
ington?" 

He  thus  learned  that  he  had  been  indebted  for  unexpected 
invitations  and  other  civilities  to  his  supposed  relationship  to 
our  first  President.  Mr.  Irving,  after  telling  this  anecdote, 
used  sometimes  to  add  to  it  another.  An  English  lady  and 
her  daughter  paused  in  a  gallery  of  art  before  a  bust  of 
Washington. 

"Mother,"  said  the  daughter,  "who  was  Washington?" 

"  Why,  my  dear,  don't  you  know  ?  He  wrote  the  Sketch 
Book." 

Returning  home  after  two  years'  absence,  he  made  some 
slight  attempt  at  practising  his  profession;  but  the  only 
thing  he  really  cared  for,  or  ever  seriously  attempted,  was 


LITERATURE    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

literature,  and  in  that  he  was  always  successful.  The  Salma- 
gundi now  appeared,  a  series  of  humorous  numbers,  which 
appeared  three  or  four  times  a  month ;  obtaining  a  circula- 
tion of  several  hundred  copies  a  number.  Erelong,  his 
humorous  history  of  New  York  by  Diedrich  Knickerbocker 
began  to  amuse  the  public,  and  it  has  ever  since  been  part  of 
its  common  stock  of  entertainment. 

After  the  war  of  1812,  Washington  Irving  joined  one  of 
his  brothers  who  was  established  as  a  merchant  in  Liverpool ; 
and  there  occurred  the  fortunate  calamity  which  drove  him 
to  adopt  literature  as  a  profession.  The  brothers  failed  in 
business,  and  lost  all  they  had  in  the  world.  Then  it  was 
that  Washington  Irving  began  the  publication  of  the  Sketch 
Book,  which  appeared  in  numbers  in  New  York,  and  won 
an  immediate  popularity,  which  it  has  ever  since  retained. 
The  first  number  was  published  in  May,  1819,  price  seventy- 
five  cents,  and  the  first  edition  of  two  thousand  copies  was 
rapidly  sold,  and  most  eagerly  read. 

Under  the  auspices  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  the  Sketch  Book 
was  republished  in  England,  where  it  became  and  remains 
not  less  a  favorite  than  in  America.  Its  most  remarkable 
and  memorable  effect  was  in  awakening  the  genius  of  Charles 
Dickens.  Mr.  Dickens  has  repeatedly  acknowledged,  and 
once  in  writing  to  Mr.  Irving  himself,  that  it  was  his  early 
reading  of  the  Sketch  Book  that  gave  his  mind  the  habit  of 
surveying  life  in  the  humorous  and  sympathetic  spirit  which 
led  to  his  peculiar  literary  career. 

The  Sketch  Book,  as  we  all  know,  was  followed  by  similar 
volumes,  which  confirmed  and  extended  the  author's  reputa- 
tion ;  until,  having  exhausted  his  stock  of  pleasant  fancies,  he 
had  the  good  sense  to  exert  his  maturer  powers  upon  works 
of  solid  instruction, — chief  among  which  are  his  Life  of 
Columbus  and  his  Life  of  Washington. 


284  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

After  seventeen  years'  residence  abroad,  he  returned  home, 
where  he  was  warmly  welcomed,  both  by  the  friends  who 
were  attached  to  his  person,  and  by  his  countrymen  gener- 
ally, who  were  proud  of  his  fame.  He  retired  soon  to  that 
delicious  and  romantic  home  ofhis  on  the  banks  of  the  Hud- 
son, near  Tarry  town,  where  the  long  evening  of  his  life  glided 
tranquilly  away,  ennobled  by  well-directed  toil,  and  cheered 
by  the  presence  of  those  whom  he  loved.  He  died  suddenly, 
of  heart-disease,  in  1859,  aged  seventy-six.  His  remains 
were  followed  to  the  grave  by  a  wonderful  concourse  of 
people ;  and  it  may  be  said,  with  considerable  truth,  that  his 
country  mourned  his  departure. 

I  had  the  pleasure  once  of  spending  a  day  with  him  at 
Sunny  side,  and  walking  with  him  about  his  grounds,  and 
listening  to  the  stories,  which  he  was  so  much  pleased  to  tell, 
of  his  old  friends  Scott,  Moore,  Leslie,  Allston,  and  others, 
and  ofhis  gay  life  in  London  and  Paris,  and  of  the  old  times 
in  New  York,  when  Knickerbocker's  history  was  coming 
out.  There  never  was  a'  man  more  completely  devoid  of 
every  kind  of  pretence  and  affectation.  He  was  simplicity 
itself. 

How  different  a  man  was  Fenimore  Cooper,  and  how 
different  his  life ! 

This  pioneer  and  ornament  of  the  young  literature  of  the 
United  States  was  not  so  happy  a  man  as  we  should  suppose 
he  might  have  been.  He  had  an  exaggerated  estimate  of 
his  own  importance,  and  as  a  consequence  he  was  prone  to 
undervalue  both  the  character  and  opinions  of  other  men. 
Unlike  the  genial  and  friendly  Irving,  who  never  had  an 
enemy  because  he  could  never  be  an  enemy,  Cooper's  life 
was  sown  with  enmities,  and  it  ended  in  a  prodigious  broil. 
He  had,  however,  admirable  qualities,  without  reckoning 
his  brilliant  talents;  and  if  he  had  but  thought  a  little 


LITERATURE   OF   THE    UNITED   STATES.  285 

less  of  himself,  and  a  great  deal  more  of  others,  he  might 
have  been  as  much  beloved  as  he  was  admired. 

His  father  was  that  rich  and  proud  old  Federalist  politi- 
cian and  member  of  Congress,  Judge  William  Cooper,  whose 
name  figures  in  the  history  of  the  intrigue  of  1801  to  foist 
Aaron  Burr  upon  the  country  as  President,  instead  of 
Thomas  Jefferson,  who  was  the  real  choice  of  the  victorious 
Democratic  party.  It  was  Judge  Cooper  who  wrote  in  the 
midst  of  the  struggle  in  the  House  of  Representatives  :  "  A 
little  good  management  would  have  secured  our  object  on 
the  first  vote.  .  .  .  Had  Burr  done  anything  for  him- 
self, he  would  long  ere  this  have  been  President." 

This  passage  was  much  relied  upon  by  the  friends  of  Burr 
in  their  successful  attempts  to  defend  that  politician  against 
the  charge  of  aiding  that  nefarious  conspiracy.  Judge 
Cooper  at  that  time  was  a  representative  from  the  State  of 
New  York,  almost  in  the  very  centre  of  which,  on  the  shores 
of  Lake  Otsego,  he  lived,  in  a  kind  of  pioneer  baronial  style, 
—  lord  of  a  county  of  primeval  forest.  He  had  built  a 
stately  mansion  near  the  lake,  and  he  lived  in  it  very  much 
in  the  manner  frequently  described  in  the  novels  of  his  son. 
Judge  Cooper  was  a  rich  man  when  he  removed  into  the 
wilderness,  but  he  became  still  richer  by  the  rapid  rise  in 
the  value  of  the  lands  which  he  had  bought  of  the  Indians. 

His  son,  James  Fenimore  Cooper,  born  in  Burlington, 
New  Jersey,  in  1789,  was  little  more  than  an  infant  when 
the  family  took  up  their  abode  in  the  forest  around  Lake 
Otsego,  and  there  he  continued  to  live,  the  petted  child  of 
a  wealthy  family,  until,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  was  sent  to 
New  Haven,  where  he  entered  the  Freshman  class  of  Yale 
College,  —  the  youngest  pupil  in  the  institution.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  he  remained  at  college  undistinguished,  and 
that  his  college  life  left  few  perceptible  traces  upon  his  char- 


286  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

acter  or  his  mind.  He  was  too  young  to  go  to  college.  A 
boy  should  be  at  least  eighteen  years  of  age  before  he 
attempts  to  grapple  with  the  subjects  which  properly  belong 
to  a  college  course,  and  which  demand  for  their  consider- 
ation a  certain  maturity  of  mind  seldom  attained  before 
eighteen. 

He  seems  not  to  have  improved  his  residence  at  New 
Haven.  He  was  expelled  from  college  a  year  before  his 
class  graduated,  and  accepted  a  midshipman's  commission  in 
the  navy  of  the  United  States ;  in  which  he  served  six  years, 
rising  to  the  rank  of  Lieutenant.  He  saw  some  service  on 
the  ooean,  and  some  on  Lake  Ontario ;  enough  in  all  to  give 
him  the  knowledge  of  sea  life  which  his  sea  novels  exhibit. 
But  just  as  the  country  was  drifting  into  the  war  of  1812 
with  Great  Britain,  which  would  have  given  abundant  scope 
for  all  his  seamanship  and  daring,  he  fell  in  love  with  Susan 
De  Lancey,  an  admirable  girl,  of  the  well-known  New  York 
De  Lanceys.  On  New- Year's  Day  of  1811,  Lieutenant 
Cooper  married  this  young  lady,  and,  resigning  his  commis- 
sion soon  after,  settled  in  a  pleasant  village  on  Long  Island 
Sound,  thirty  miles  from  New  York. 

Here  he  lived  for  some  years  the  half-idle  life  of  a  country 
gentleman,  without  the  remotest  expectation  of  attracting  to 
himself  the  attention  of  the  world.  So  far  as  is  known,  he 
had  never  given  any  particular  indication  of  possessing  a 
talent  for  literature,  and  probably  did  not  himself  suspect 
the  existence  of  the  gift  that  slumbered  within  him.  He 
used  to  relate  the  trifling  circumstance  which  led  to  his  first 
attempt.  He  was  reading  aloud  to  his  wife  one  of  those 
tedious  and  trivial  English  novels  which  were  so  common 
before  Scott  and  Cooper  supplanted  them.  Weary  of  the 
spiritless  delineations  of  inane  characters,  he  said  to  his 
wife,  with  a  yawn,  "I  can  write  a  better  novel  than  that 
myself." 


Fho  by  Brady. 


J.    TfrWtrrj 


LITERATURE    OF   THE    UNITED    STATES.  287 

"  You  had  better  try,"  replied  she  ;  and  thought  no  more 
of  it. 

It  was  a  happy  and  a  timely  suggestion.  He  was  young, 
energetic,  with  plenty  of  ambition,  and  nothing  to  do. 
Without  telling  even  his  wife  of  his  intention,  he  began  to 
write  a  novel,  which  he  named  "  Precaution,"  and  which, 
after  a  few  weeks  of  secret  toil,  he  had  the  pleasure  of  sub- 
mitting to  his  wife's  inspection,  and  reading  it  to  a  circle  of 
friends.  It  is  a  curious  thing,  but  he  produced  merely  a 
tolerable  imitation  of  the  very  kind  of  novel  with  which  he 
had  been  so  much  disgusted.  Partial  friends,  however, 
flattered  the  author,  as  they  generally  do,  and  he  was  in- 
duced in  1819  to  publish  it,  at  his  own  expense,  in  two 
volumes.  It  had  a  moderate  success,  but  made  nothing  that 
resembled  a  hit ;  and  it  was  indeed  singularly  devoid  of  all 
that  energy  and  fire  and  graphic  power  which  distinguished 
the  author's  later  works.  He  was  then  thirty  years  of  age, 
and  his  talent  still  slept.  • 

This  partial  failure  was  the  event  which  roused  him  to  a 
consciousness  of  his  abilities.  He  now  abandoned  English 
models,  and  formed  the  scheme  of  producing  a  story  of 
American  life,  a  tale  of  the  Kevolution,  — the  classic  period 
in  the  history  of  the  infant  nation.  The  "  Spy "  was  the 
result  of  his  labors, — the  first  and  greatest  of  a  class  of 
novels  now  to  be  numbered  by  thousands. 

As  in  the  case  of  nearly  every  other  very  successful  book, 
the  author  had  great  difficulties  in  getting  it  before  the  pub- 
lic. No  publisher  could  be  found  who  would  undertake  it, 
and  it  was  finally,  after  three  years'  delay,  published  at  the 
author's  cost.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Cooper  was  the  only 
proof-reader  of  this  work,  and  that  he  sometimes  actually 
assisted  in  setting  it  in  type.  With  very  great  difficulty  the 
first  volume  was  put  in  type ;  and  when  that  was  done,  the 


288  TRIUMPHS  or  ENTERPRISE. 

author  was  so  thoroughly  sickened  of  the  enterprise,  that  he 
would  have  been  more  than  willing  to  give  the  novel  away 
to  any  one  who  would  have  brought  it  out.  But  there  was 
not  a  printer  in  the  city  who  had  both  courage  and  capital 
enough  to  accept  the  author's  urgent  and  repeated  offers. 

In  1822,  three  years  after  the  appearance  of  "  Precaution," 
w  The  Spy  "  was  published.  Its  success  was  immediate  and 
immense.  It  had  every  kind  of  success  whjch  a  novel  can 
nave,  — universal  circulation  in  the  author's  own  country,  the 
intense  admiration  of  all  classes  of  readers,  prompt  republi- 
cation  in  England,  a  brilliant  popularity  there,  translation 
into  every  cultivated  language,  even  into  Arabic  and  Per- 
sian, countless  imitations,  and  the  acquisition  of  a  permanent 
place  in  universal  literature. 

The  "  Pioneers  "  followed,  in  which  the  author  turned  to 
excellent  account  his  early  experience  of  life  in  the  wilder- 
ness, and  his  recollections  of  the  lordly  state  of  his  father's 
establishment.  In  due  time  the  "  Pilot "  appeared,  and 
afterwards  the  "Red  Rover,"  sea  novels,  in  which  Mr. 
Cooper  availed  himself  of  his  six  years'  experience  as  an 
officer  of  the  navy. 

For  thirty-one  years  he  was  a  popular  writer,  producing  a 
long  series  of  successful  novels,  and  a  valuable  contribution 
to  the  history  of  his  country,  —  a  "  History  of  the  Navy  of 
the  United  States."  He  took  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  make 
this  work  strictly  correct,  which  was  a  high  merit  in  a  man 
so  imaginative  and  so  patriotic  as  Fenimore  Cooper,  who 
could  easily  and  with  impunity  —  nay,  with  the  applause  of 
nine  tenths  of  his  readers  —  have  heightened  the  effect  of 

o 

narratives  flattering  to  the  national  pride,  by  giving  a  little 
play  to  his  imagination. 

Toward  the  close  of  his  life,  he  wrote  some  works  designed 
to  cure  his  countrymen  of  some  of  their  alleged  bad  habits, 


LITERATURE    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES.  289 

which  called  forth  from  the  press  a  great  number  of  humor- 
ous and  satirical  paragraphs,  as  well  as  some  which  were 
abusive.  Mr.  Cooper  was  weak  enough  to  resent  this,  and 
to  bring  a  great  number  of  libel  suits  against  the  offending 
editors.  His  famous  suit  against  the  New  York  "  Tribune  " 
was  founded  upon  the  following  words,  which  occurred  in  a 
letter  giving  an  account  of  a  trial  in  which  the  novelist 
obtained  a  verdict  of  four  hundred  dollars :  — 

"  The  value  of  Mr.  Cooper's  character  has  been  judicially  ascer- 
tained. It  is  worth  exactly  four  hundred  dollars." 

Mr.  Greeley  defended  the  suit  in  person,  and  made  a  very 
spirited  and  able  defence,  of  which  he  published  a  ludicrous 
account  afterwards  in  the  "  Tribune."  Nevertheless,  he  was 
obliged  to  conclude  his  amusing  narrative  with  the  following 
paragraph :  — 

"  The  jury  retired  about  half-past  two,  and  the  rest  of  us  went 
to  dinner.  The  jury  were  hungry  too,  and  did  not  stay  out  long. 
On  comparing  notes,  there  were  seven  of  them  for  a  verdict  of  $100, 
two  for  $200,  and  three  for  $500.  They  added  these  sums  up  — 
total  $2,600  —  divided  by  twelve,  and  the  dividend  was  a  little  over 
$200  ;  so  they  called  it  $200  damages,  and  6  cents  cost,  which  of 
course  carries  full  costs  against  us.  We  went  back  from  dinner, 
took  the  verdict  in  all  meekness,  took  a  sleigh  and  struck  a  bee-line 
for  New  York." 

Mr.  Cooper  rather  prided  himself  on  these  suits,  and  used 
to  boast  that  he  had  won  his  case  every  time  he  had  gone 
into  court.  I  have  no  doubt  he  thought  he  was  rendering  a 
service  to  the  public  in  curbing  what  he  considered  the  licen- 
tiousness of  the  press. 

He  died  at  his  ancestral  seat,  upon  the  banks  of  Lake 
Otsego,  in  1851,  aged  sixty-two  years.  His  eldest  daughter 
still  lives,  and  has  won  considerable  distinction  by  a  series 


290  TEIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

of  pleasant  and  sympathetic  works  upon  the  charms  of 
country  life.  Mr.  Cooper  was  a  strikingly  handsome  man, 
of  magnificent  proportions,  and  most  winning,  agreeable 
presence.  In  the  bosom  of  his  own  family  he  is  said  to 
have  been  the  kindest  and  most  entertaining  of  men. 

I  come  now  to  the  last  of  the  illustrious  trio. 

On  the  twenty-second  of  December,  1807,  Congress, 
acting  upon  the  recommendation  of  President  Jefferson, 
passed  an  embargo  law,  which  prohibited  the  departure  from 
the  ports  of  the  United  States  of  any  vessels  bound  for  for- 
eign countries,  unless  they  were  men-of-war,  or  foreign 
merchant  vessels  going  home  in  ballast. 

This  act  suspended  the  commerce  of  the  United  States, 
and  threw  out  of  employment  mariners,  merchants'  clerks, 
and  a  great  number  of  other  persons  who  derived  their  liveli- 
hood directly  and  indirectly  from  commerce.  In  no  part  of 
the  country  did  the  embargo  produce  effects  so  disastrous  as 
in  New  England,  which  for  many  years  had  been  growing 
rich  by  supplying  the  belligerents  with  provisions  oncl  other 
merchandise.  Boston  was  desolate  ;  its  wharves  and  ware- 
houses were  silent  and  deserted.  The  prices  of  produce  fell, 
and  thus  the  farmers  were  disappointed  and  alarmed.  New 
England,  moreover,  had  been,  from  the  early  days  of  Wash- 
ington, the  stronghold  of  Federalism ;  and  the  Federalists 
were  opposed  not  only  to  the  embargo,  but  to  the  policy 
which  had  led  to  it,  as  they  were  afterwards  to  the  war  which 
it  led  to.  Interest,  therefore,  and  political  feeling,  combined 
to  inflame  the  popular  discontent. 

There  was  then  living  at  the  village  of  Cummington,  in 
Hampshire  County,  — the  garden  county  of  Massachusetts,  — 
Dr.  Peter  Bryant,  a  physician  noted  the  country  round  for 
his  skill,  learning,  and  benevolence.  Among  his  children, 
all  of  whom  were  intelligent  beyond  their  years,  was 


LITERATUKB    OF   THE    UNITED    STATES.  291 

William  Cullen,  a  boy  of  thirteen,  who,  young  as  he  was, 
was  already  somewhat  famous  in  his  native  county  as  a  poet. 
At  nine  he  had  written  harmonious  verses,  and  at  ten  he  had 
composed  a  poem  for  a  school  exhibition,  which  was  thought 
good  enough  for  publication,  and  was  actually  published  in 
the  county  paper.  And  now  this  gifted  boy,  moved  by  what 
he  heard  of  the  terrible  embargo,  and  the  more  terrible 
Jefferson  and  the  Democratic  party,  wrote  a  poem,  in  the 
heroic  measure,  entitled  "The  Embargo,"  in  which  he 
endeavored  to  express  the  feeling  of  New  England  respecting 
the  course  of  the  general  government.  The  poem  was  pub- 
lished in  pamphlet  form,  and  was  so  well  received  in  the 
county  that,  a  year  after,  it  was  republished  in  a  little  thin 
volume,  the  title-page  of  which  read  as  follows  :  — 

"The  Embargo;  or,  Sketches  of  the  Time.  A  Satire.  The 
Second  edition  corrected  and  enlarged,  together  with  the  Spanish 
Revolution  and  other  Poems.  By  William  Cullen  B^ant.  Bos- 
ton :  Printed  for  the  Author  by  E.  G.  House.  No.  V.  Court  Street. 
1809." 

The  lad  was  nearly  fifteen  years  of  age  when  this  volume 
of  thirty-six  pages  saw  the  light.  It  contained  poems  so 
extraordinary,  that  it  was  thought  necessary  in  the  preface  to 
print  a  kind  of  certificate,  declaring  that  the  author  was 
really  only  a  boy  !  The  reader,  I  am  sure,  will  be  gratified 
to  read  one  of  the  short  poems  from  this  volume,  which  was 
written  when  the  poet  was  ten  years  and  nine  months  old. 

DROUGHT. 

Plunged  amid  the  limpid  waters, 

Or  the  cooling  shade  beneath, 
Let  me  fly  the  scorching  sunbeams, 

And  the  south  wind's  sickly  breath ! 


TKIUMPHS    OF   EOTERPRISE. 

Sirius  burns  the  parching  meadows, 

Flames  upon  the  embrowning  hill 
Dries  the  foliage  of  the  forest, 

And  evaporates  the  rill. 

Scarce  is  seen  a  lonely  flow'ret, 

Save  amid  th'  embowering  wood ; 
O'er  the  prospect,  dim  and  dreary, 

Drought  presides  in  sullen  mood  I 

Murky  vapors  hung  in  ether, 

Wrap  in  gloom  the  sky  serene ; 
Nature  pants  distressful,  —  silence 

Reigns  o  'er  all  the  sultry  scene. 

Then  amid  the  limpid  waters, 

Or  beneath  the  cooling  shade, 
Let  me  shun  the  scorching  sunbeams, 

And  the  sickly  breeze  evade. 
JULY,  1807. 

Such  precocity  as  this  was  a  perilous  gift.  Fortunately 
the  boy  had  a  judicious  father,  who  early  taught  him  to 
avoid  superfluous  words,  and  to  distinguish  between  true 
poetical  expression,  and  that  which  has  nothing  of  poetry 
but  the  form.  The  poet,  in  one  of  his  latter  productions, 
commemorates  at  once  his  father's  death  and  his  own  indebt- 
edness to  his  taste  and  judgment. 

"  For  he  is  in  his  grave  who  taught  my  youth 
The  art  of  verse,  and  in  the  bud  of  life 
Offered  me  to  the  Muses." 

And  while  his  early  taste  was  forming,  there  reached  him, 
in  the  seclusion  of  his  village  home,  Wordsworth's  Lyrical 
Ballads, — that  volume  which  survived  the  criticism  of  the 


LITERATURE    IN   THE   UNITED   STATES.  293 

"  Edinburgh  Keview,"  to  make  its  way  over  the  world,  and 
kindle  the  gentle  poetic  flame  in  kindred  minds  beyond  the 
sea.  There  were  few  books  of  poetry  then  to  be  met  with 
among  the  hills  of  Western  Massachusetts,  and  the  boy 
appears  to  have  read  little  poetry  in  his  childhood  except 
Pope. 

"  Upon  opening  Wordsworth,"  Mr.  Bryant  once  said, 
"  a  thousand  springs  seemed  to  gush  up  at  once  in  my  heart?, 
and  the  face  of  nature  of  a  sudden  to  change  into  a  strange 
freshness  and  life." 

And  what  a  "  nature  "  it  was  that  he  beheld  around  him  ! 

Western  Massachusetts  is  an  enchanting  region.  I  spent 
a  summer  there  recently,  within  sight  of  that  Monument 
Mountain  which  Mr.  Bryant  has  celebrated  in  verse,  and  not 
far  from  that  Green  River  to  which  he  had  dedicated  stanzas 
as  flowing  and  tranquil  as  itself.  If  it  were  in  the  power  of 
beautiful  nature  to  awaken,  or  even  to  cultivate,  the  poetic 
faculty,  the  region  of  the  Berkshire  hills  would  do  it.  But 
beautiful  nature  cannot  do  this.  Mr.  Bryant  is  a  poet 
because  of  the  fine  brain  which  nature  gave  him,  and  the 
excellent  father  who  taught  and  reared  him. 

Poet  as  he  was,  however,  and  marked  out  by  nature  to 
charm  and  cheer  his  species,  he  must  needs  go  to  college, 
like  other  lads,  and  enter  a  lawyer's  office,  and  be  admitted 
to  practice,  and  hang  out  his  tin  sign  in  a  country  town,  and 
plead  causes  in  county  courts.  All  this  he  did ;  and  we 
find  him,  as  early  as  his  nineteenth  year,  established  as  a 
country  lawyer  in  his  native  State.  He  did  not  want  for 
practice,  and  yet  found  time,  as  he  has  ever  since  done,  to 
exercise  his  poetic  gift. 

The  "  North  American  Review,"  in  1816,  was  conducted 
by  a  club  of  Boston  gentlemen,  the  chief  of  whom  was  Rich- 
ard H.  Dana.  It  was  more  like  a  monthly  magazine  then, 


294  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

than  a  review,  and  published  whatever  literary  matter  came 
to  hand  of  the  requisite  merit.  Mr.  Dana  received,  one 
day  in  1816,  two  poems  that  were  offered  for  publication,  — • 
one  entitled  Thanatopsis,  and  the  other,  A  Fragment.  The 
poems  being  accompanied  by  the  name  of  Bryant,  Mr.  Dana, 
in  some  way  now  forgotten,  received  the  impression  that 
Thanatopsis  was  written  by  Dr.  Peter  Bryant,  then  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Massachusetts  State  Senate,  and  that  The  Frag- 
ment was  the  production  of  his  son.  Struck  with  the 
majestic  beauty  of  the  longer  poem,  he  hastened  to  the  Sen- 
ate house  to  see  the  new  poet.  He  found  Dr.  Bryant  a  man 
of  dark  complexion,  with  black  hair,  thick  eyebrows,  and  a 
countenance  indicative  of  every  excellent  quality  except  the 
poetic.  The  editor  was  rather  ashamed  of  his  want  of  discern- 
ment, but  remained  for  some  years  under  the  impression  thai 
the  author  of  Thanatopsis  was  the  Senator  from  Hampshire  ; 
not  discovering  his  mistake  until,  in  conversation  with  the 
poet  himself,  he  chanced  to  use  the  expression,  "  your  fathers 
Thanatopsis."  Who,  indeed,  could  suppose  that  that  noble 
poem  was  the  work  of  a  youth  of  nineteen? 

"  So  live,  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 
Thou  go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon  ;  but,  sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

These  are  its  concluding  lines.  The  reader  cannot  do 
better  than  learn  them  by  heart,  and  say  them  over  once  a 
day,  for  they  have  a  moral  as  well  as  a  poetic  value.  From 
the  day  of  the  publication  of  this  poem,  in  1816,  an 


UTEKATUKE   OF   THE    UNITED    STATES.  295 

American  could  boast  that  his  country  also  had  produced 
a  poet.  William  Cullen  Bryant  —  still  the  honored  head  of 
American  literature  —  was  the  first  native  of  the  Western 
Continent  who  ever  wrote  poetry  which  the  world  accepted 
as  poetry. 

One  who  can  write  such  verses  as  these  cannot  long  be 
contented  without  exercising  his  talent.  After  the  publica- 
tion of  Thanatopsis,  the  young  poet  occasionally  contributed 
to  the  periodicals  of  Boston ;  and  in  1821  his  poems  were 
published  at  Cambridge  in  a  volume,  which  procured  for  him 
a  certain  intense  local  fame,  and  gave  him  courage  to  .aban- 
don the  law  and  come  to  New  York  to  gain  his  livelihood  by 
literature.  This  was  in  1825,  when  he  was  thirty-one  years 
of  age.  After  a  year  or  two  spent  in  editing  a  literary 
periodical,  he  made  that  fortunate  engagement  with  the  "  Eve- 
ning Post,"  —  as  fortunate  for  his  country  as  for  himself,  — 
which  has  added  at  length  an  ample  fortune  to  the  poet's 
ever-brightening  fame.  From  the  day  when  the  influence  of 
Mr.  Byrant  began  to  be  felt  in  this  newspaper,  it  has  been 
the  ally  of  every  sound  principle  in  politics  and  morals. 
He  continued  to  contribute  poems  to  the  magazines  of  the 
day ;  so  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  he  had  a  con- 
siderable collection,  which,  in  1831,  he  published  in  a  vol- 
ume of  some  magnitude.  The  public  cordially  welcomed 
this  addition  to  its  means  of  enjoyment.  The  author  sent  a 
copy  to  Washington  Irving,  then  running  a  brilliant  career 
of  authorship  in  London.  In  one  of  Irviug's  letters  of 
1832,  we  read  :  — 

"  I  have  received  recently  a  volume  of  poetry  from  Mr.  Bryant, 
in  which  are  many  things  really  exquisite.  Yet  I  despair  of  find- 
ing a  bookseller  that  will  ofier  anything  for  it,  or  that  will  even 
publish  it  for  his  own  benefit ;  such  is  the  stagnation  of  the  liter- 
ary market." 

19 


296  TEIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  cholera  was  then  raging  in  England, — the  terrible 
cholera  of  1832.  Nothing  daunted,  however,  Mr.  Irving 
wrote  a  preface  introducing  the  poet  to  the  people  of  Eng- 
land, and  the  volume  soon  after  appeared.  Its  merits  alone 
would  have  given  it  currency  enough  in  time ;  but  the 
friendly  offices  of  Mr.  Irving  drew  the  attention  of  the  pub- 
lic to  it  at  once,  and  secured  to  Mr.  Bryant  an  immediate 
popularity.  His  poems  have  ever  since  held  their  ground  in 
England,  and  his  name  is  familiar  in  English  homes. 

Of  late  years,  Mr.  Byrant  has  withdrawn  in  some  degree 
from  active  life.  But  from  any  worthy  public  object  his  in- 
fluence and  voice  have  never  been  willingly  withheld.  For 
ten  years  past  he  has  occasionally  contributed  poems  to  the 
New  York  "  Ledger,"  which  have  the  flow  and  finish  and 
seductive  charm  of  his  earlier  works.  How  little  could  any 
one  have  foreseen,  when  he  offered  his  first  poems  to  a  coun- 
try paper,  sixty-five  years  ago,  that  he  would  live  to  see  the 
day  when  there  would  be  published  in  the  United  States  a 
literary  periodical  that  would  convey  his  verses,  in  a  single 
week,  to  four  hundred  thousand,  and  offer  them  for  perusal 
to  two  millions  of  people  ! 

His  latest  work  is  a  translation  of  the  Iliad  of  Homer, 
which  has  been  universally  approved.  Mr.  Bryant's  literary 
career,  reckoning  from  the  date  of  his  first  publication, 
extends  over  a  period  of  sixty-four  years. 

Irving  —  Cooper  —  Bryant,  fortunate  is  the  generation 
tliat  produces  three  such  lights  and  ornaments  of  the  race  1 


TWO  OP  OUR  BOHEMIANS. 


EDGAR  A.  POB  AND   "  ARTEMTJS  WARD,"  HOW  THEY  LIVED,  AND  WHY 
THEY  DIED  so  YOUNG. 

No  one  who  has  written  of  poor  Poe  seems  to  have  quite 
understood  his  case.  Nor  should  I,  if  I  had  not  spent  a  few 
days  last  summer  at  the  Inebriate  Asylum  at  Binghamton,  in 
the  State  of  New  York. 

Edgar  A.  Poe,  like  Byron  and  many  others,  appears  to 
have  been  a  man  whose  brain  was  permanently  injured  by 
alcohol,  and  so  injured  that  there  was  no  safety  for  him  except 
in  total  and  eternal  abstinence  from  every  intoxicating  drink. 
I  have  often  heard  the  late  N.  P.  Willis  speak  of  Poe's  con- 
duct when  he  was  sub-editor  of  the  "  Evening  Mirror,"  of 
which  Mr.  Willis  was  one  of  the  editors.  Poe,  he  would 
say,  was  usually  one  of  the  most  quiet,  regular,  and  gentle- 
manlike of  men,  remarkably  neat  in  his  person,  elegant  and 
orderly  about  his  work,  and  wholly  unexceptionable  in  con- 
duct and  demeanor.  But  in  a  weak  moment,  tempted,  per- 
haps, by  a  friend,  or  by  the  devil  Opportunity,  he  would  take 
one  glass  of  wine  or  liquor.  From  that  moment  he  was  another 
being.  His  self-control  was  gone.  An  irresistible  thirst  for 
strong  drink  possessed  him,  and  he  would  drink  and  drink  and 
drink,  as  long  as  he  could  lift  a  glass  to  his  lips.  If  he  could 
not  get  good  liquor,  he  would  drink  bad ;  all  he  desired  was 
something  fiercely  stimulating.  He  would  frequently  keep 
this  up  for  several  days  and  nights,  until,  in  fact,  his  system 
was  perfectly  exhausted,  and  he  had  been  taken  helpless  and 


298  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

unresisting  to  bed.  There  he  would  lie,  miserable  and 
repentant,  until  he  had  in  some  degree  recovered  his  health, 
when  he  would  return  to  his  labor,  if  the  patience  of  his 
employers  had  not  been  exhausted. 

Having  formed  this  deplorable  habit  while  his  brain  was 
immature,  I  believe  that  it  then  received  an  incurable 
injury,  which  caused  it  to  generate  unsound  thoughts,  erro- 
neous opinions,  and  morbid  feelings.  His  thinking  appara- 
tus was  damaged,  and  he  came  upon  the  stage  of  life  with  a 
propensity  toward  absurdity  and  extravagance. 

David  Poe,  of  Maryland,  the  grandfather  of  the  poet,  was 
an  officer  of  repute  in  the  army  of  the  Eevolution.  Like 
many  other  soldiers,  he  married  when  the  war  was  over,  and 
settled  in  the  chief  city  of  his  native  State,  —  Baltimore. 
His  eldest  son,  who  was  also  named  David,  was  destined  to 
the  law,  and  in  due  time  entered  the  office  of  a  Baltimore 
lawyer.  This  son  was  an  ardent,  impetuous  youth,  one  of 
those  ill-balanced  young  men  who  may,  if  circumstances 
favor,  perform  heroic  actions,  but  who  are  much  more  likely 
to  be  guilty  of  rash  and  foolish  ones.  While  he  was  still 
pursuing  his  studies,  an  English  actress,  named  Elizabeth 
Arnold,  appeared  at  the  Baltimore  theatre.  David  Poe  fell 
in  love  with  her,  as  many  young  fellows  before  and  since 
have  done  with  ladies  of  that  profession.  More  than  that,  he 
married  her,  abandoned  his  studies,  and  went  upon  the 
stage. 

Having  taken  this  desperate  step,  he  lived  for  a  few  years 
the  wandering  life  of  an  actor,  playing  with  his  wife  in  the 
principal  cities  of  the  South.  Three  children  were  born  to 
them,  of  whom  Edgar,  the  eldest,  first  saw  the  light  at  Balti- 
more, in  1811.  Six  years  after,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  David  Poe 
were  fulfilling  an  engagement  at  the  theatre  in  Richmond, 
Virginia.  Within  a  short  time  of  one  another,  they  both 


TWO   OF   OUR   BOHEMIANS.  299 

died,  leaving  their  three  little  children  totally  unprovided 
for.  Edgar,  at  this  time,  was  a  lively,  pretty  boy,  extremely 
engaging  in  his  manners,  and  giving  great  promise  of  future 
talent.  He  was  so  fortunate  as  to  attract  the  attention  of 
Mr.  John  Allan,  a  rich  merchant  of  Kichmond,  who  adopted 
him,  and  who  proceeded  to  afford  him  what  he  considered 
the  best  opportunities  for  education  then  existing. 

When  the  boy  was  not  quite  seven  years  of  age,  he  took 
him  to  London ;  and  in  a  village  near  that  city,  he  placed  the 
little  orphan  at  a  boarding-school,  where  he  left  him  for  nearly 
five  years.  So  far  as  is  known,  the  child  had  not  a  friend, 
still  less  a  relation,  on  that  side  of  the  ocean.  Here  was  an 
eager,  vivacious,  and  probably  precocious  boy,  confined -in 
the  desolation  of  an  English  school ;  which  is,  generally 
speaking,  a  scene  as  unsuited  to  the  proper  nurture  of  the 
young,  as  Labrador  for  the  breeding  of  canary-birds.  Such 
a  boy  as  that  needed  the  tenderness  of  women  and  the 
watchful  care  of  an  affectionate  and  wise  father.  He  needed 
love,  home,  and  the  minute,  fond  attention  which  rare  and 
curious  plants  usually  receive,  but  which  children  seldom  do, 
who  are  so  much  more  worthy  of  it,  and  would  reward  it  so 
much  more.  He  needed,  in  short,  all  that  he  did  not  have, 
and  he  had  in  abundance  much  that  he  did  not  need.  If 
the  truth  could  be  known,  it  would  probably  be  found  that 
Poe  received  at  this  school  the  germ  of  the  evil  which 
finally  destroyed  him.  Certainly,  he  failed  to  acquire  the 
self-control  and  strong  principle  which  might  have  saved 
him.  The  head-master,  it  appears,  was  a  dignified  clergy- 
man of  the  Church  of  England,  whom  the  little  American 
was  disposed  to  laugh  at  in  his  shabby  suit  of  black  on  week- 
days, though  he  regarded  him  with  awe  and  admiration 
when  on  Sunday  he  donned  his  canonicals,  and  ascended 
the  pulpit. 


300  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Poe  was  past  eleven  years  of  age  —  a  pale,  bright  little 
boy  —  when  Mr.  Allan  brought  him  home,  and  placed  him 
at  a  school  in  Richmond.  At  a  very  early  age,  not  much 
later  than  fourteen,  he  entered  the  Virginia  University  at 
Charlotte sville,  which  Jefferson  had  founded,  and  over 
which  the  aged  statesman  was  still  affectionately  watching, 
as  the  favorite  child  of  his  old  age.  At  this  university  he 
became  immediately  distinguished,  both  in  the  class-room 
and  out  of  doors.  One  of  his  biographers  (who,  however, 
was  a  notorious  liar)  tells  us  that,  on  a  hot  day  in  June,  "he 
swam  seven  miles  and  a  half  against  a  tide  running,  probably, 
from  two  to  three  miles  an  hour."  This  is  a  manifest  false- 
hood. Neither  Byron,  nor  Leander,  nor  Franklin,  nor  any 
of  the  famous  swimmers,  could  have  performed  such  a  feat. 
Nevertheless,  he  may  have  been  an  excellent  swimmer,  and 
may  have  excelled  in  the  other  sports  proper  to  his  age. 
The  acquisition  of  knowledge  was  easy  to  him,  and  he  could 
without  serious  effort  have  carried  off  the  highest  honors  of 
his  class.  But  he  drank  to  excess  ;  and  as  drink  is  the  ally 
of  all  the  other  vices,  he  gambled  recklessly,  and  led  so 
disorderly  a  life  that  he  was  expelled  from  the  college.  His 
adopted  father  refusing  to  pay  his  gambling  debts,  the  young 
man  wrote  him  a  foolish,  insulting  letter,  took  passage  for 
Europe,  and  set  off,  as  he  said,  to  assist  the  Greeks  in  their 
struggle  for  independence. 

Of  his  adventures  in  Europe  only  two  facts  are  known ; 
for  Poe  was  always  curiously  reticent  respecting  the  events 
of  his  own  life.  One  fact  is,  that  he  never  reached  Greece. 
The  other  is,  that,  about  a  year  after  his  departure  from 
America,  he  was  arrested  in  St.  Petersburg  by  the  police, 
probably  for  an  offence  committed  when  he  was  drunk. 
The  American  minister  procured  his  discharge,  and  finding 
him  totally  destitute  of  money,  relieved  his  wants  and  paid 


TWO   OF    OUR   BOHEMIANS.  301 

his  passage  home.     On  reaching  Eichmond  the  prodigal  was 
heartily  welcomed  by  his  benefactor,  Allan,  who  soon  pro 
cured  for  him  a  cadetship  at  West  Point. 

He  appears  to  have  entered  that  institution  with  a  sincere 
determination  to  perform  his  duties,  and  become  a  good 
officer.  For  a  while  his  behavior  was  excellent ;  he  stood 
high  in  his  class ;  and  his  friends  hoped  that  he  had  sown 
his  wild  oats,  and  that  he  was  now  a  reformed  character. 

But  what  an  amount  of  falsehood  is  implied  in  that  expres- 
sion, He  has  sown  his  wild  oats.  The  popular  belief  is,  that 
a  young  man  may  go  on  drinking,  carousing,  gambling,  and 
turning  night  into  day,  for  a  certain  time,  and  then,  sud- 
denly changing  his  course  of  life,  live  the  rest  of  his  days  as 
well  and  happily  as  though  he  had  never  gone  astray.  Mis- 
erable mistake  !  No  one  can  abuse  his  body  without  paying 
the  penalty,  and,  least  of  all,  a  man  of  delicate  and  refined 
organization  like  Edgar  A.  Poe.  Such  men  as  he  are  formed 
by  nature  for  the  exercise  of  the  noblest  virtues  and  the 
practice  of  the  highest  arts.  A  stronger  and  coarser  nature 
than  his,  or  one  more  mature,  might  have  suffered  for  a 
while  from  the  blighting  fumes  of  alcohol,  and  then  in  some 
degree  have  recovered  its  tone,  and  made  some  amends  for 
the  wrong  it  had  done. 

It  was  not  so  with  the  tender 'and  unformed  organs  of  this 
young  man,  who  never  recovered  from  the  injury  which 
early  dissipation  had  wrought.  A  few  months  after  entering 
West  Point,  his  appetite  for  drink  resumed  its  sway,  and  he 
relapsed  into  his  former  habits.  Before  his  first  year  had 
expired,  he  was  expelled  from  the  academy. 

Again  he  returned  to  Richmond,  and  again  his  long-suffer- 
ing benefactor  received  him  into  his  house.  There  he  found 
the  young  and  beautiful  wife  whom  Mr.  Allan  had  recently 
married ;  and  to  her,  it  is  said,  he  paid  attentions  so  marked 


302  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

that  Mr.  Allan  was  at  length  thoroughly  incensed  against 
him,  and  banished  him  forever  from  his  house.  A  more 
probable  version  of  the  story  is,  that  Mr.  Allan,  happy  in 
the  society  of  his  wife,  was  less  patient  than  before  of  his 
protege's  dissipated  habits,  and  was  easily  set  against  him  by 
the  young  lady.  However  it  may  be,  John  Allan  died  soon 
after,  and,  though  he  left  a  large  fortune,  poor  Poe's  name 
was  not  mentioned  in  his  will.  His  death  occurred  in  1834, 
when  Poe  was  twenty-three  years  of  age. 

The  young  man  had  published  a  small  volume  of  poems  at 
Baltimore  in  1829,  which  attracted  some  attention,  more  on 
account  of  the  youth  of  the  writer  than  the  merits  of  the 
writing.  Being  now  destitute  of  all  resource,  he  made  some 
endeavors  to  procure  literary  employment.  Failing  in  this, 
he  enlisted  in  the  army  as  a  private  soldier.  While  he  was 
serving  in  the  ranks,  he  was  recognized  by  officers  whom  he 
had  known  at  West  Point,  who,  after  inquiring  into  his  case, 
applied  for  his  discharge ;  but  before  the  document  arrived 
Poe  deserted.  He  was  not  very  closely  pursued,  however, 
and  he  soon  found  himself  in  Baltimore,  a  free  man,  but 
almost  totally  destitute.  Then  it  was  that  he  read  in  a  paper 
an  advertisement  by  the  publisher  of  a  literary  periodical, 
offering  two  prizes  of  $100-  each  for  the  best  story  and  the 
best  poem  that  should  be  offered.  Poe  sent  in  both  a  story 
and  a  poem,  won  both  prizes,  and  soon  after  obtained  employ- 
ment as  editor  of  the  "  Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  then 
published  at  Richmond. 

Again  the  same  story  :  steady  conduct  and  well -sustained 
industry  for  a  short  time ;  then  drink,  dissipation,  and  dis- 
charge. Before  he  was  dismissed,  he  had  married  his  cousin, 
Virginia  Clemm,  a  very  pretty,  amiable  girl,  and  exceed- 
ingly fond  of  her  erratic  husband.  The  ill-provided  pair 
removed  to  New  York  in  1837,  where  he  continued  to  live 


TWO    OF   OUR   BOHEMIANS.  303 

during  the  greater  part  of  the  rest  of  his  life.  Nothing  new 
remains  to  be  told.  He  frequently  obtained  respectable  and 
sufficiently  lucrative  employment,  but  invariably  lost  it  by 
misconduct,  arising,  as  I  think,  solely  from  the  effect  of 
alcohol  on  his  brain.  In  October,  1849,  in  the  course  of  a 
Southern  lecturing  tour,  he  stopped  at  Baltimore,  where, 
meeting  some  of  his  old  companions,  he  spent  a  night  in  a 
wild  debauch,  and  was  found  in  the  morning  in  the  street 
suffering  from  delirium  tremens.  He  was  taken  to  the  hos- 
pital, where,  in  a  few  days,  he  died,  aged  thirty-eight. 

Poe  was  a  mild-looking  man,  of  pale,  regular  features, 
with  a  certain  expression  of  weakness  about  the  mouth,  which 
men  often  have  who  are  infirm  of  purpose.  He  had  some- 
thing of  the  erect  military  bearing  noticeable  in  young  men 
who  have  had  a  military  drill  in  their  youth.  What  with 
the  neatness  of  his  attire,  the  gentleness  of  his  manners,  and 
the  pale  beauty  of  his  face,  he  usually  excited  an  interest  in 
those  who  met  him,  and .  he  remained  to  the  last  a  favorite 
with  ladies. 

He  has  had  many  followers  in  the  Bohemian  way  of  life, 
few  of  whom  have  had  his  excuse.  But  nearly  all  of  them 
ended  in  the  same  miserable,  tragic  manner.  Of  the  twenty 
yonng  men  of  the  New  York  press,  who  were  known,  ten 
years  ago,  as  the  Bohemians,  all  are  in  their  graves  except 
five  or  six,  who  saw  in  time  the  abyss  before  them,  and 
struck  into  better  paths.  One  died  of  an  honorable  wound 
received  in  battle.  The  rest  might  all  have  been  living  and 
honored  at  this  moment,  if  they  had  lived  pure  and  temper- 
ate lives,  and  gone  to  bed  when  they  had  done  their  work, 
instead  of  going  to  Pfaff's.  Let  me  briefly  relate  the  story 
of  one  of  them,  who  was,  naturally,  as  amiable  and  worthy 
a  fellow  as  any  young  man  of  his  time  — to  say  nothing  of 
his  rare  talent. 


304  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

In  the  beautiful  town  of  Cleveland,  Ohio,  ten  years  ago, 
I  was  introduced,  one  Sunday  morning,  to  Mr.  Charles  F. 
Browne,  who  had  recently  acquired  celebrity  by  his  Artemus 
Ward  letters,  in  the  Cleveland  "  Plaindealer."  He  was  then 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  of  somewhat  slender  form,  but  with 
ruddy  cheeks,  and  a  general  appearance  of  health  and  vigor. 
He  was  the  local  editor  of  the  "  Plaindealer,"  and  had  the 
ready,  cordial,  and  off-hand  manner  of  the  members  of  the 
Western  press.  Like  other  professional  humorists,  he  was 
not  particularly  funny  in  ordinary  conversation ;  on  the  con- 
trary, he  was  less  so  than  Western  editors  usually  are.  I 
was  far  from  anticipating  the  career  that  was  in  store  for 
him ;  still  less  could  I  have  foreseen  the  premature  death  of 
a  young  man  who  presented  even  an  exceptional  appearance 
of  good  health.  If  he  were  alive  to-day,  he  would  only  be 
thirty-eight  years  of  age. 

He  was  born  at  Waterford,  in  Maine,  where  his  father  was 
a  surveyor.  His  native  village,  as  he  says  in  one  of  his 
papers,  "  does  not  contain  over  forty  houses,  all  told ;  but 
they  are  milk-white,  with  the  greenest  of  blinds,  and,  for  the 
most  part,  are  shaded  with  beautiful  elms  and  willows.  To 
the  right  of  us  is  a  mountain  ;  to  the  left  a  lake.  The  vil- 
lage nestles  between.  Of  course  it  does.  I  never  read  a 
novel  in  my  life  in  which  the  village  did  not  nestle.  Vil- 
lages invariably  nestle."  In  this  secluded  nook  of  New 
England,  he  passed  the  first  fourteen  years  of  his  life,  dur- 
ing which  he  acquired  such  education  as  a  rather  idle  and 
sport-loving  boy  could  acquire  in  the  common  and  high 
schools. 

He  was  sent  to  learn  the  printing  business  at  a  neighbor- 
ing town,  called  Skowhegan,  where,  in  the  office  of  the 
Skowhegan  "  Clarion,"  he  learned  to  set  type  and  work  the 
hand-press.  To  the  last  of  his  days  he  held  this  place  in 


TWO    OF   OUE   BOHEMIANS.  305 

abhorrence.  One  of  his  friends  has  recorded  that  he  was 
accustomed  "to  set  up  a  howl  of  derision"  whenever  its 
name  was  mentioned ;  and  that  whenever  he  desired  to  ex- 
press the  last  degree  of  contempt  for  any  person,  place,  or 
thing,  he  would  speak  of  it  as  worthy  of  Skowhegan.  How 
many  a  boy  has  reaped  a  fell  revenge  upon  a  teacher  or  an 
employer,  by  turning  out  to  be  a  genius,  and  consigning  him 
to  universal  ridicule ! 

At  sixteen  he  found  his  way  to  Boston,  where  he  obtained 
employment  as  a  compositor  in  the  office  of  the  funniest 
periodical  then  published  in  Boston,  "  The  Carpet-bag,"  to 
which  Shillaber,  Halpine,  and  Saxe  contributed.  As  he  set 
up,  from  week  to  week,  the  humorous  contributions  of  those 
writers,  the  conviction  grew  upon  him  that  he  too  could 
write  a  piece  that  would  make  people  laugh.  I  think  he 
must  have  been  reading  Franklin's  Autobiography  or  the 
preface  to  "  Pickwick,"  for  in  putting  his  talent  to  the  test, 
he  employed  a  device,  similar  to  that  used  by  Franklin  and 
Dickens  in  offering  their  first  productions  to  the  press. 
Having  written  his  piece  in  a  disguised  hand,  he  put  it  into 
the  editor's  box.  Great  was  his  joy  when  it  was  handed  to 
him,  soon  after,  to  set  in  type. 

This  first  piece,  I  believe,  was  in  the  style  of  Major  Jack 
Downing,  whose  letters,  he  once  said,  had  more  to  do  with 
making  him  a  humorist  than  the  productions  of  any  other 
writer. 

About  this  time  he  chanced  to  read  Bayard  Taylor's 
"Views  Afoot,"  in  which  that  popular  author  gave  an 
account  of  his  making  the  tour  of  Europe,  and  paying  his 
way  by  working  at  his  trade,  which  was  that  of  a  printer. 
Captivated  by  this  example,  he  started  for  the  Great  West. 
When  his  money  was  exhausted,  he  would  stop  for  a  while 
m  some  large  town  where  there  was  a  printing-office,  and 


306  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

replenish  his  purse ;  which  done,  he  would   continue  his 
journey. 

"I  did  n't  know,"  he  once  said,  "but  what  1  might  get  as 
far  as  China,  and  set  up  a  newspaper  one  day  in  the 
tea-chest  tongue." 

He  stopped  short  of  China,  however.  At  the  town  of 
Tiffin,  Ohio,  he  obtained  a  place  as  compositor  and  assistant 
editor,  at  four  dollars  a  week.  From  Tiffin  he  removed  to 
Toledo,  where  he  procured  a  similar  place  in  the  office  of  the 
"Toledo  Commercial,"  at  five  dollars  a  week.  It  was  upon 
this  paper  that  his  talent  as  a  humorist  first  attracted  atten- 
tion, and  he  was  soon  permitted  to  devote  his  whole  time  to 
filling  the  local  columns  with  amusing  abuse  of  the  rival 
paper.  He  acquired  so  much  celebrity  in  Ohio  as  a  writer 
of  facetious  paragraphs,  that  he  was  offered  at  length  the 
place  of  local  editor  of  the  Cleveland  "  Plaindealer,"  at  a 
salary,  munificent  for  the  time  and  place,  of  twelve  dollars 
a  week. 

Most  of  the  noted  humorists  —  and  the  great  master  of 
humor  himself,  Charles  Dickens  —  have  shown  a  particular 
fondness  for  persons  who  gain  their  livelihood  by  amusing 
the  public, —  showmen  of  all  kinds  and  grades,  from  the 
tumbler  in  the  circus  to  the  great  tragedian  of  the  day.  In 
the  performance  of  his  duty  as  local  editor,  Charles  Browne 
had  abundant  opportunity  of  gratifying  this  taste,  and  he 
gradually  became  acquainted  with  most  of  the  travelling 
showmen  of  the  Western  country.  He  delighted  to  study 
their  habits,  and  he  used  to  tell  many  a  good  story  of  their 
ingenious  devices  for  rousing  the  enthusiasm  of  the  public. 
Much  of  this  snowman's  lore  he  turned  to  account  in  the 
Letters  of  Artemus  Ward. 

There  are  dull  times  in  a  place  like  Cleveland, — times 
when  the  local  editor  is  hard  put  to  it  to  fill  his  columns. 


TWO   OF   OUR  BOHEMIANS.  307 

No  show,  no  court,  no  accident,  no  police  report,  no  trot- 
ting match,  no  fashionable  wedding,  no  surprise  party,  no 
anything.  One  day  in  1859,  when  the  local  editor  of  the 
Cleveland  "  Plaindealer  "  was  in  desperate  want  of  a  topic, 
he  dashed  upon  paper  a  letter  from  an  imaginary  showman, 
to  which  he  affixed  the  name  of  a  Revolutionary  General, 
which  had  always  struck  him  as  being  odd,  —  "Arternas 
Ward."  The  letter  began  thus  :  — 

"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Plaindealer  —  SIR  :  I'm  moving  along  — 
slowly  along  —  down  tords  your  place.  I  want  you  should  write 
me  a  letter,  sayin  hows  the  show-bizniss  in  your  place.  My  show 
at  present  consists  of  three  moral  Bares,  a  Kangaroo  —  a  amoozin 
little  Raskal ;  'twould  make  you  larf  to  deth  to  see  the  little  cuss 
jump  up  and  squeal  —  wax  figgers  of  G.  Washington,  Gen.  Tay- 
lor, John  Bunyan,  Dr.  Kidd,  and  Dr.  Webster  in,  the  act  of 
killiii'  Dr.  Parkman,  besides  several  miscellanyus  moral  wax  stat- 
toots  of  celebrated  piruts  and  murderers,  etc.,  ekalled  by  few  and 
exceld  by  none." 

The  showman  proceeds  to  urge  the  editor  to  prepare  the 
way  for  his  coming,  and  promises  to  have  all  his  handbills 
"  dun  at  your  offiss." 

"  We  must  fetch  the  public  somehow,"  he  continues.  "  We  must 
work  on  their  feelins  —  come  the  moral  on 'em  strong.  -If  it's  a 
temperance  community,  tell  'em  I  sined  the  pledge  fifteen  minits 
arter  ise  born.  But,  on  the  contrary,  if  your  people  take  their 
tods,  say  that  Mister  Ward  is  as  genial  a  feller  as  we  ever  met  — 
full  of  conviviality,  and  the  life  and  sole  of  the  soshul  Bored.  Take, 
don't  you?" 

Mister  Ward  concludes  his  epistle  by  condensing  its 
whole  meaning  into  a  very  short  postscript :  — 

"  You  scratch  my  back,  and  He  scratch  your  back." 


308  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

This  letter  made  a  wonderful  hit.  It  was  immediately 
copied  into  many  hundreds  of  newspapers,  and  was  gener- 
ally taken  as  the  genuine  production  of  a  showman.  Other 
letters  in  the  same  vein  followed,  which  carried  the  name  of 
Artemus  Ward  and  the  Cleveland  "  Plaindealer  "  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth.  For  two  or  three  years  they  figured  in  the 
funny  column  of  most  of  the  periodicals  in  America,  Eng- 
land, and  Australia. 

But  except  the  reputation  which  the  letters  gave,  they 
were  of  little  advantage  to  their  author.  His  salary  may 
have  been  increased  a  few  dollars  a  week,  and  he  added  a 
little  to  his  income  by  contributions  to  the  comic  papers  of 
New  York.  No  man,  indeed,  is  so  cruelly  plundered  as  the 
writer  of  short  amusing  pieces,  easily  clipped  and  copied. 
He  writes  a  comic  piece  for  a  trifling  sum,  which  amuses  per- 
haps five  millions  of  people,  and  up  one  compensates  him 
except  the  original  purchaser.  There  -are,  for  example, 
comic  dialogues  which  have  done  service  for  fifteen  years  at 
negro  minstrel  entertainments,  and  now  make  thousands  of 
people  laugh  every  night,  for  which  the  author  received 
three  dollars. 

Artemus  Ward,  anxious  to  buy  back  the  family  home- 
stead in  which  to  shelter  the  old-age  of  his  widowed  mother, 
soon  discovered  that  he  could  never  do  it  by  making  jokes, 
unless  he  could  sell  them  over  and  over  again.  So  he  tried 
comic  lecturing.  The  first  night  the  experiment  was  a  fail- 
ure. A  violent  storm  of  snow,  sleet,  and  wind  thinned  the 
audience  —  in  Clinton  Hall,  New  York — to  such  a  degree, 
that  the  lecturer  lost  thirty  dollars  by  the  enterprise.  A 
tour  in  New  England,  however,  had  better  results.  He  lec- 
tured a  hundred  nights,  by  which  he  cleared  nearly  eight 
thousand  dollars;  and  he  was  soon  able  to  establish  his 
mother  in  the  comfortable  village  home  in  which  he  was 
born. 


TWO   OF   OUR  BOHEMIANS.  309 

I  ought  not  to  conclude  this  article  without  letting  the 
reader  precisely  know  why  this  bright  and  genial  spirit  is  no 
longer  here  to  add  to  the  world's  harmless  amusement. 
Well,  this  was  the  reason :  wherever  he  lectured,  whether 
in  New  England,  California,  or  London,  there  was  sure  to  be 
a  knot  of  young  fellows  to  gather  round  him,  and  go  home 
with  him  to  his  hotel,  order  supper,  and  spend  half  the  night 
in  telling  storfes  and  singing  songs.  To  any  man  this  will 
be  fatal  in  time ;  but  when  the  nightly  carouse  follows  an 
evening's  performance  before  an  audience,  and  is  succeeded 
by  a  railroad  journey  the  next  day,  the  waste  of  vitality  is 
fearfully  rapid.  Five  years  of  such  a  life  finished  poor 
Charles  Browne.  He  died  in  London,  in  1867,  aged  thirty- 
three  years ;  and  he  now  lies  buried  at  the  home  of  his 
childhood  in  Maine. 

He  was  not  a  deep  drinker.  He  was  not  a  man  of  strong 
appetites.  It  was  the  nights  wasted  in  conviviality  which 
his  system  needed  for  sleep,  that  sent  him  to  his  grave  forty 
years  before  his  time.  For  men  of  his  profession  and  cast 
of  character,  for  all  editors,  literary  men,  and  artists,  there 
is  only  one  safety  —  TEETOTALISM.  He  should  have  taken 
the  advice  of  a  stage-driver  on  the  Plains,  to  whom  he  once 
offered  some  whiskey,  and  I  commend  it  strongly  to  every 
young  man :  — 

"  I  DON'T  DRINK.    I  WON'T  DEINK  !     AND  I  DON'T  LIKE 

TO  SEE  ANYBODY  ELSE  DRINK.  I'M  OF  THE  OPINION  OF 
THOSE  MOUNTAINS  —  KEEP  YOUR  TOP  COOL.  THEY'VE  GOT 
SNOW  AND  I  'VE  GOT  BRAINS  ;  THAT 'S  AT/T,  THE  DIFFER- 


JOSIAH  QUINCY. 

A  MODEL  GENTLEMAN  OF  THE  OLD  SCHOOL. 

BOKN  in  1772,  and  died  in  1864 !  Ninety-two  years  of 
happy,  prosperous,  and  virtuous  life  !  How  was  it  that,  in 
a  world  so  full  of  the  sick,  the  miserable,  and  the  unfortu- 
nate, Josiah  Quincy  should  have  lived  so  long,  and  enjoyed, 
during  almost  the  whole  of  his  life,  uninterrupted  happiness 
and  prosperity?  Let  us  see. 

He  was  born  in  Boston,  in  a  house  the  walls  of  which  are 
still  standing,  in  a  part  of  the  city  now  called  Washington 
Street.  His  father  was  that  young  Josiah  Quincy  who  went 
away  on  a  patriotic  mission  to  London  when  this  boy  was 
three  years  of  age,  and  only  returned  to  die  within  sight  of 
his  native  land,  without  having  delivered  the  message  with 
which  Doctor  Franklin  had  charged  him.  Left  an  orphan  at 
so  early  an  age,  his  education  was  superintended  by  one  of 
the  best  mothers  a  boy  ever  had ;  and  this  was  the  first  cause 
both  of  the  length  and  of  the  happiness  of  his  life.  This 
admirable  mother  was  so  careful  lest  her  fondness  for  her 
only  son  should  cause  her  to  indulge  him  to  his  harm,  that 
she  even  refrained  from  caressing  him,  and,  in  all  that  she 
did  for  him,  thought  of  his  welfare  first,  and  of  her  own 
pleasure  last,  or  not  at  all.  To  harden  him,  she  used  to 
have  him  taken  from  a  warm  bed  in  winter,  as  well  as  in 
summer,  and  carried  down  to  a  cellar  kitchen,  and  there 
dipped  three  times  in  a  tub  of  cold  water.  She  even  accus- 
tomed him  to  sit  in  wet  feet,  and  endeavored  in  all  ways  to 

20 


312  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPKISE. 

toughen  his  physical  system  against  the  wear  and  tear  of 
life. 

This  boy  (who  only  died  seven  years  ago)  was  old  enough 
during  the  Eevolutionary  war  to  remember  some  of  its  inci- 
dents. "I  imbibed,"  he  once  wrote  ,  "the  patriotism  of  the 
period,  was  active  against  the  British,  and  with  my  little  whip 
and  astride  my  grandfather's  cane,  I  performed  prodigies  of 
valor,  and  more  than  once  came  to  my  mother's  knees  declar- 
ing that  I  had  driven  the  British  out  of  Boston."  Like  all 
other  healthy  boys,  he  was  a  keen  lover  of  out-of-door 
sports  of  every  kind.  "  My  heart,"  he  wrote,  "  was  in  ball 
and  marbles."  And  yet,  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of 
the  schools  of  that  time,  he  was  compelled  to  sit  on  the  same 
hard  bench  every  day,  four  hours  in  the  morning,  and  four 
hours  in  the  afternoon,  studying  lessons  which  it  was  impos- 
sible so  young  a  child  could  value  or  understand.  A  boy  of 
less  elastic  mind  and  less  vigorous  constitution  of  body 
must  have  been  injured  by  this  harsh,  irrational  discipline. 
It  seems  only  to  have  taught  him  patience  and  fortitude. 
Being  a  member  of  a  rich  and  ancient  family,  he  enjoyed 
every  advantage  of  education  which  America  then  afforded, 
and  graduated  from  Harvard  College,  in  1790,  with  honor. 
He  was  soon  after  admitted  to  the  bar ;  but  as  he  was  not 
dependent  upon  his  profession  for  a  maintenance,  he  was  not 
a  very  diligent  or  famous  lawyer. 

I  have  said  that  he  was  a  very  happy  man.  This  is 
almost  equivalent  to  saying  that  he  was  very  happily  mar- 
ried,  since  the  weal  or  woe  of  most  men's  lives  chiefly 
depends  upon  the  wisdom  with  which  they  choose  their  life's 
companion.  Josiah  Quincy  was  indeed  most  fortunately 
married,  and  yet  he  does  not  appear  to  have  exercised  his 
judgment  in  the  choice  of  a  wife.  In  seven  days  after  he 
first  saw  her  face,  he  was  engaged  to  be  married  to  her.  It 
happened  thus : — 


JOSIAH   QUINCY.  313 

On  a  certain  Sunday  evening,  in  1794,  being  then  twenty- 
two  years  of  age,  he  went,  according  to  his  custom,  to  visit 
one  of  his  aunts,  who  lived  in  Boston.  He  found  at  his 
aunt's  house,  a  Miss  Morton,  a  young  lady  from  New  York, 
of  whom  he  had  never  before  heard,  and  who  was  so  little 
remarkable  in  her  appearance,  that  she  made  no  impression 
on  his  mind.  In  the  course  of  the  evening,  a  female  relative 
who  was  present  asked  him  to  go  into  the  next  room,  as  she 
wished  to  consult  him  on  some  affair  of  business.  While 
they  were  talking,  the  strange  lady  began  to  sing  one  of  the 
songs  of  Burns  with  a  clearness  of  voice,,  and  with  a  degree 
of  taste  and  feeling,  which  charmed  and  excited  him  beyond 
anything  he  had  ever  experienced.  He  immediately  threw 
down  the  law  papers  which  he  had  been  examining,  and 
returned  to  the  company.  Miss  Morton  sang  several  other 
eongs,  to  the  great  delight  of  all  who  heard  her,  and  to  the 
unbounded  rapture  of  this  particular  young  gentleman. 
When  the  singing  was  over,  he  entered  into  conversation 
with  her,  and  discovered  her  to  be  an  intelligent,  well- 
informed,  unaffected,  and  kind-hearted  girl.  In  short,  he 
fell  in  love  with  her  upon  the  spot,  and  when  the  young  lady 
left  Boston  a  week  after,  he  was  engaged  to  her. 

Some  time  elapsed,  however,  before  they  were  married. 
She  was  a  young  lady  of  highly  respectable  connections  and 
considerable  fortune.  'The  marriage  was  suitable  in  all  re- 
spects, and  they  lived  together  fifty-three  happy  years.  This 
most  fortunate  union  was,  no  doubt,  one  of  the  main  causes 
of  the  singular  peace  and  uninterrupted  happiness  of  his 
life. 

It  was  expected,  at  that  time,  that  a  man  of  fortune,  tal- 
ents, and  education,  like  Josiah  Quincy,  would  enter  public 
life.  In  1805  he  was  elected  a  member  of  Congress  by  the 
Federalists  of  Boston,  a  party  of  which  he  was  a  warm  adhe- 


314  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

rent,  and  to  which  he  clung  as  long  as  it  existed.  His  son 
tells  us,  in  an  excellent  biography  of  his  father  recently 
published,  that,  to  the  last  of  his  life,  when  he  was  in  reality 
a  member  of  the  Republican  party,  the  old  man  still  called 
himself  a  Federalist.  Having  been  elected  to  Congress,  he 
did  a  most  extraordinary  thing :  he  actually  set  to  work  to 
prepare  himself,  by  a  study  of  politics  and  history,  to  dis- 
charge the  duties  of  the  place  I  He  even  learned  the  French 
language,  in  order  to  be  able  to  converse  with  the  foreign 
ministers  and  other  Europeans  whom  he  might  meet  in 
"Washington.  Besides  this,  he  made  a  large  collection  of 
pamphlets,  documents,  and  books  relating  to  the  history  of 
his  country,  and  to  the  political  questions  which  had  agitated 
it  since  the  close  of  the  Revolution. 

He  was,  unquestionably,  the  ablest  member  of  the  Federal 
party  in  Congress  at  that  time,  and  he  served  his  party  with 
a  zeal  and  eloquence  which  was  highly  useful  in  keeping  the 
administrations  of  Jefferson  and  Madison  in  the  true  path. 
Being  myself  in  the  fullest  sympathy  with  Jefferson  and 
Madison,  I  cannot  think  so  highly  of  his  Congressional  career 
as,  perhaps,  his  son  would  have  us.  But  I  can  fully  appre- 
ciate his  honesty,  his  industry,  his  high-bred  courtesy,  and 
his  admirable  eloquence.  His  ardor  in  debate  would  have 
led  to  frequent  challenges  and  duels,  if  he  had  not  from  the 
first  made  up  his  mind  never  to  be  bullied  into  an  acquies- 
cence with  so  barbarous  a  custom.  In  conversation  with 
Southern  members  on  the  subject,  he  would  say  :  "  We 
do  not  stand  upon  equal  grounds  in  this  matter.  If  we  fight 
and  you  kill  me,  it  is  a  feather  in  your  cap,  and  your  con- 
stituents will  think  all  the  better  of  you  for  it.  If  I  should 
kill  you,  it  would  ruin  me  with  mine,  and  they  never  would 
send  me  to  Congress  again." 

Reasoning  of  this  kind  the  fire-eaters  of  1810  could  under- 


JOSIAH  QUINCY.  315 

stand,  though  they  would  have  been  little  able  to  compre- 
hend the  lofty  moral  grounds  on  which  his  objections  to  the 
practice  were  really  founded. 

The  most  remarkable  event  of  his  public  life  was  his  oppo- 
sition to  the  creation  of  States,  by  Act  of  Congress,  out  of 
territory  which  did  not  belong  to  the  United  States  when 
the  Constitution  was  agreed  to.  His  opinion  was,  that  such 
new  States  could  only  be  admitted  into  the  Union  by  the 
consent  of  as  many  of  the  original  thirteen  States  as  had 
been  necessary  for  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  itself. 
So  rooted  and  passionate  was  his  conviction  on  this  subject, 
that,  in  the  year  1811,  when  the  act  was  discussed  under 
which  Louisiana  was  afterwards  admitted,  he  uttered  in  the 
House  the  following  words  :  — 

w  I  am  compelled  to  declare  it  as  my  deliberate  opinion, 
that,  if  this  bill  passes,  the  bonds  of  this  Union  are  virtually 
dissolved  ;  that  the  States  which  compose  it  are  free  from 
their  moral  obligation ;  and  that,  as  it  will  be  the  right  of 
all,  so  it  will  be  the  duty  of  some,  to  prepare  definitely  for 
a  separation ;  amicably,  if  they  can,  violently  if  they  must." 

This  looks  so  much  like  the  secession  doctrines  of  subse- 
quent times,  that,  I  am  afraid,  many  readers  will  never  be 
able  to  distinguish  the  difference.  One  thing  is  certain  :  the 
admission  of  new  States  formed  out  of  new  territory  by  a 
mere  Act  of  Congress,  did  actually,  for  fifty  years,  make 
the  Southern  States  masters  of  this  Union ;  and  Josiah 
Quincy  was,  perhaps,  the  first  public  man  who  clearly  saw 
and  clearly  foretold  that  this  would  be  the  case. 

Mr.  Quincy,  in  one  of  his  letters  from  Washington, 
relates  an  anecdote  of  Felix  Grundy,  of  Tennessee,  which 
throws  light  upon  Western  politics,  as  they  were  conducted 
half  a  century  ago.  Mr.  Grundy,  after  having  soundly 
berated  Mr.  Quincy  in  the  House,  said  to  him  the  next  day  : 


316  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

w  Quincy,  I  thought  I  had  abused  you  enough;  but  I  find 
it  will  not  do." 

"  Why,  what  is  the  matter  now  ?  I  do  not  mean  to  speak 
again." 

"  No  matter,"  said  Grundy ;  "  by  Heavens,  I  must  give 
you  another  thrashing." 

"  Why  so  ?  "  asked  the  member  from  Massachusetts. 

«  Why,"  said  Grundy,  "  the  truth  is,  a  d— d  fellow  has 
set  up  against  me  in  my  District,  —  a  perfect  Jacobin,  — as 
much  worse  than  I  am  as  worse  can  be.  Now,  except  Tim 
Pickering,  there  is  not  a  man  in  the  United  States  so  per- 
fectly hated  by  'the  people  of  my  District  as  yourself.  You 
must  therefore  excuse  me.  I  must  abuse  you,  or  I  shall 
never  get  re-elected.  I  will  do  it,  however,  genteelly.  I 
will  not  do  it  as  that  fool  of  a  Clay  did  —  strike  so  hard  as 
to  hurt  myself.  But  abuse  you  I  must.  You  understand ; 
I  mean  to  be  friends,  notwithstanding.  I  mean  to  be  in 
Congress  again,  and  must  use  the  means." 

The  imagination  is  a  great  deceiver.  We  have  a  curious 
example  of  this  truth  in  the  different  accounts  which  have 
come  down  to  us  respecting  the  appearance  of  General  Wash- 
ington. Josiah  Quincy  and  his  wife  both  saw  this  illustri- 
ous man,  and  both  were  persons  of  eminent  intelligence 
and  perfect  truth.  Nevertheless,  how  different  their  impres- 
sions !  Mrs.  Quincy,  who  was  of  a  highly  imaginative 
temperament,  used  to  speak  of  him  as  being  as  far  above 
ordinary  mortals,  in  grace  and  majesty  of  person  and  de- 
meanor, as  he  was  in  character.  Mr.  Quincy,  on  the 
contrary,  though  revering  Washington  not  less,  thought  him 
rather  countrified  and  awkward  in  his  appearance  and 
manners.  He  used  to  say  that  "  President  Washington  had 
the  air  of  a  country  gentleman  not  accustomed  to  mix  much 
with  society,  perfectly  polite,  but  not  easy  in  his  address  and 


JOSIAH   QUINCT.  317 

conversation,  and  not  graceful  in  his  gait  and  movements." 
We  can  account  for  these  different  representations  by  sup- 
posing that  one  of  the  witnesses  was,  and  the  other  was  not, 
misled  by  the  imagination. 

When  Josiah  Quincy  was  a  young  man,  about  the  year 
1795,  he  paid  a  visit  to  New  York,  and  while  there  became 
acquainted  with  Alexander  Hamilton,  who,  with  Aaron  Burr, 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  New  York  bar.  Upon  one  occasion, 
t  when  the  conversation  turned  upon  Colonel  Burr,  Mr. 
Quincy  asked  Hamilton  whether  Burr  was  a  man  of  great 
talents.  Hamilton's  reply,  in  view  of  subsequent  events, 
was  remarkable. 

"Not  of  great  talents,"  said  Hamilton.  "His  mind,  though 
brilliant,  is  shallow,  and  incapable  of  broad  views  or  con- 
tinued effort.  He  seldom  speaks  in  court  more  than  twenty 
minutes ;  and,  though  his  speeches  are  showy  and  not  with- 
out effect  upon  a  jury,  they  contain  no  proof  of  uncommon 
powers  of  mind.  But  he  has  ambition  that  will  never  be 
satisfied  until  he  has  encircled  his  brow  with  a  diadem." 

These  words  were  uttered  nine  years  before  the  duel  took 
place  which  terminated  the  life  of  Alexander  Hamilton.  It 
shows  that,  even  at  that  early  period,  he  had  the  same  ill 
opinion  of  Burr,  the  too  careless  expression  of  which  after- 
wards cost  him  his  life. 

In  the  spring  of  1812,  when  President  Madison  deter- 
mined, before  declaring  war  against  Great  Britain,  to  try 
once  more  the  effect  of  an  embargo,  Mr.  Quincy  was  informed 
of  the  President's  intention  by  Mr.  Calhoun,  a  member  of 
the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations.  Being  authorized  to 
communicate  the  news  to  his  constituents,  he  joined  another 
member  from  Massachusetts  in  writing  to  two  of  the  lead- 
ing citizens  of  Boston  a  letter  containing  the  important  intel- 
ligence. Despatch  in  the  transmission  of  the  news  was,  of 


318  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

course,  all  important,  and  they  contracted  with  a  stage  pro- 
prietor to  convey  the  letter  from  Washington  to  Boston  in 
seventy-six  hours.  The  contract  was  performed  ;  and  never, 
perhaps,  did  news  produce  a  greater  excitement. 

"On  Saturday  and  Sunday,"  as  Mr.  Quincy  himself 
relates,  "  the  whole  town  was  in  motion.  Every  truck  and 
cart  was  in  requisition.  The  streets  and  wharves  were 
crowded  by  the  merchants,  anxious  to  send  their  ships  to 
sea  before  the  harbor  was  closed  by  the  embargo."  All  day 
Sunday  those  Puritan  merchants  continued  to  load  their 
ships ;  so  that,  by  the  time  the  embargo  was  laid,  all  the 
vessels  designed  for  England  were  safe  at  sea. 

Some  pretty  rough  politicians  used  to  find  the  way  to 
Washington  from  the  Western  States,  fifty  or  sixty  years 
ago.  Matthew  Lyon  was  one  of  these,  a  man  of  great  note 
in  his  day.  Josiah  Quincy  once  asked  him  how  he  obtained 
an  election  to  the  House  of  Representatives  ••  so  soon  after 
his  emigration  to  Kentucky.  He  answered,  "  By  establish- 
ing myself  at  a  cross-roads,  which  everybody  in  the  district 
passed  from  time  to  time,  and  abusing  the  sitting  member." 

This  Lyon  was  one  of  those  members  who  continually  sent 
printed  speeches  and  political  letters  to  their  constituents. 
Mr.  Quincy  asked  him  one  day  how  he  avoided  offending 
those  of  his  constituents  whom  he  chanced  to  overlook  in 
this  distribution  of  favors." 

"  I  manage  it  in  this  way,"  said  he.  "  When  I  am  canvas- 
sing my  district,  and  I  come  across  a  man  who  looks  distantly 
and  cold  at  me,  I  get  up  cordially  to  him  and  say  :  f  My  dear 
friend,  you  got  my  printed  letter  last  session,  of  course.* 
'No,  sir,'  replies  the  man,  with  offended  dignity,  'I  got  no 
such  thing.'  'No  ! '  I  cry  out  in  a  passion.  'No  !  damn  that 
post-office ! '  Then  I  make  a  memorandum  of  the  man's  name 
and  address,  and  when  I  get  back  to  Washington  I  write  him 
an  autograph  letter,  and  all  is  put  to  rights." 


JOSIAH  QUINCr.  319 

After  eight  years  of  Congressional  life,  when  he  was  but 
forty-one  years  of  age,  and  when  he  might  easily  have  been 
reflected,  Josiah  Quincy  withdrew  from  public  life,  partly 
from  private  and  partly  for  public  reasons.  The  main  pub- 
lic reason  was,  that  the  Federal  party  was  too  powerless  ,even 
to  make  a  useful  opposition ;  and  his  chief  private  reason 
was,  that  he  loved  his  wife  and  children  too  much  to  be  sep- 
arated from  them.  Returning  home,  he  served  his  native 
State,  first  by  making  costly  experiments  in  agriculture  upon 
his  estate,  which,  though  unprofitable  to  him,  were  highly 
beneficial  to  the  community.  For  several  years  he  was 
mayor  of  Boston,  during  which  he  reformed  the  city  govern- 
ment, and  rendered  services  to  the  city  the  good  effects  of 
which  are  still  apparent.  If  Boston  is  the  best-governed 
city  in  America,  it  is  in  part  owing  to  the  efficiency  and  wis- 
dom of  Josiah  Quincy. 

When  Mr.  Quincy  was  President  of  Harvard  College,  he 
displayed  unusual  tact  in  the  management  of  different  col- 
lege cases.  He  actually  was  so  eccentric  as  to  believe  that 
when  young  men  complain,  their  complaints  may  be  not 
altogether  without  cause.  For  several  years  there  had  been 
discontent  among  the  students  with  the  contractor  who  pro- 
vided their  food.  Upon  inquiring  into  the  matter,  Presi- 
dent Quincy  discovered  that  the  students  were  right,  and 
instead  of  rebuking  them  for  their  rebellious  disposition,  he 
proceeded  to  remove  the  causes  of  their  dissatisfaction. 
Besides  causing  the  table  to  be  served  with  abundant  and 
proper  food,  he  ordered  a  set  of  china  from  England,  and 
banished  from  the  college-board  the  heterogeneous  vessels 
which  had  formerly  disfigured  it. 

On  one  occasion  the  contractor  complained  that  the  stu- 
dents would  persist  in  toasting  their  bread  at  the  stove,  — to 
the  great  injury  of  the  forks.  The  contractor  said  that  he 


320  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE. 

complained  of  this  to  former  presidents,  but  that  none  of 
them  had  proved  equal  to  putting  an  end  to  it. 

w  What  did  they  do  when  you  complained  ?  "  asked  Presi- 
dent Quincy. 

"  Why,"  replied  the  contractor,  "  they  would  admonish  the 
offender,  and  in  case  of  a  repetition  of  the  practice,  they, 
would  suspend  or  dismiss  him." 

"But  that  seems  a  rather  hard  measure,"  said  the  Presi- 
dent. "  Pray,  do  you  not  have  your  own  bread  toasted  for 
breakfast  in  winter  ?  " 

"Certainly  I  do,"  was  the  reply ;  "but  I  cannot  afford  to 
toast  the  bread  of  all  the  college  on  my  present  terms." 

"  Very  good,"  said  the  President ;  "  toast  the  bread,  and 
charge  the  additional  expense  in  your  bill." 

This  excellent  man  carried  one  of  his  virtues  to  excess  — 
early  rising.  He  rose  so  early  in  the  morning,  that  he 
scarcely  had  sleep  enough ;  so  that,  when  he  sat  down  during 
the  day  for  ten  minutes,  he  was  very  likely  to  fall  asleep. 
John  Quincy  Adams  was  also  addicted  to  excessive  early 
rising.  One  day  these  two  distinguished  men  went  into 
Judge  Story's  lecture-room  to  hear  him  read  his  lecture  to 
his  class  in  the  law  school.  The  Judge  received  the  two 
presidents  with  his  usual  politeness,  and  placed  them  on  the 
platform  by  his  side,  in  full  view  of  the  class,  and  then  went 
on  with  his  lecture.  In  a  very  few  minutes  both  the  presi- 
dents were  fast  asleep.  The  Judge  paused  a  moment,  and 
pointing  to  the  two  sleeping  gentlemen,  uttered  these  words  : 
"  Gentlemen,  you  see  before  you  a  melancholy  example  of 
the  evil  effects  of  early  rising." 

This  remark  was  followed  by  a  shout  of  laughter,  which 
effectually  roused  the  sleepers,  after  which  the  Judge  resumed 
his  discourse. 

For  sixteen  years  Mr.  Quincy  was  President  of  Harvard 


JOSIAH   QUINCY.  321 

College,  —  a  difficult  and  laborious  office.  His  son  tells  us, 
that,  during  the  whole  sixteen  years  of  his  presidency,  he 
was  never  absent  from  the  six-o'clock  morning  prayers  but 
three  times  ;  and  that  was  occasioned  by  his  being  obliged 
to  attend  a  distant  court  as  a  witness  on  behalf  of  the  Col- 
lege. Upon  resigning  his  presidency,  though  he  was  then 
an  old  man  past  seventy,  he  was  still  apparently  in  the  ve.ry 
prime  of  his  powers,  and  he  lived  many  years  after  in  the 
enjoyment  of  the  most  perfect  health,  and  of  scarcely 
diminished  vigor.  It  concerns  us  all  to  know  the  secret  of 
such  health  and  longevity  as  this.  His  father  died  very 
young,  and  his  mother  in  middle  life.  Nor  had  any  of  his 
paternal  ancestors  lived  beyond  seventy-four. 

In  the  first  place,  he  was  strictly  temperate  in  the  use  of 
intoxicating  drinks,  almost  to  total  abstinence.  At  break- 
fast and  at  night  he  ate  moderately  and  of  plain  food.  At 
dinner,  which  he  had  the  good  sense  to  eat  in  the  middle  of 
the  day,  he  ate  heartily  of  whatever  was  set  before  him.  He 
discovered,  many  years  ago,  how  important  perfect  cleanli- 
ness is  to  the  preservation  of  health,  and  he  made  a  frequent 
use  of  the  bath  tub,  the  flesh  brush,  and  the  hair  gloves. 
He  was  an  exceedingly  early  riser.  He  was  addicted  to  no 
vice  whatever.  His  life  was  blameless  and  cheerful.  He 
indulged  none  of  the  passions  which  waste  the  vitality  and 
pervert  the  character.  All  his  objects  were  such  as  a  rational 
and  virtuous  man  could  pursue  without  self-reproach,  and 
with  the  approbation  of  the  wise  and  good.  Thus  living,  he 
attained  nearly  to  the  age  of  ninety-three,  enjoying  life  almost 
to  the  last  hour,  and  passed  away  as  peacefully  and  painlessly 
as  a  child  goes  to  sleep. 

He  was  an  eminently  handsome  man,  from  youth  to 
extreme  old  age.  His  fine  set  of  teeth  he  kept  entire  until 
his  death ;  and  this,  no  doubt,  had  much  to  do  with  preserv- 


322  TKIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

ing  the  health  of  his  body  and  the  proportions  of  his  counte- 
nance. His  son  says  that  a  bust  of  him  taken  in  his  prime, 
by  Horatio  Greenough,  might  well  pass  for  the  head  of  an 
Apollo  or  a  Jupiter.  Of  all  the  myriads  of  men  that  have 
lived  and  labored  on  this  earth  since  its  creation,  I  question 
if  there  has  ever  been  one  man  who  lived,  upon  the  whole,  a 
better  life  than  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Massachusetts.  He  had 
a  sound  constitution,  and  took  care  of  it ;  he  had  a  good 
mind,  and  improved  it ;  he  had  an  excellent  wife,  and  appre- 
ciated her  value ;  he  had  a  good  fortune,  and  did  not  abuse 
it ;  he  lived  in  a  good  country,  and  faithfully  served  it ;  he 
had  an  enlightened  religion,  and  lived  up  to  it. 

In  religious  matters,  Josiah  Quincy  displayed  a  degree  of 
independence  and  good  sense  rarely  to  be  met  with  in  his 
generation  in  New  England.  He  had  a  particular  aversion 
to  all  theological  disputes  and  sectarian  exclusiveness.  He 
was  accustomed  sometimes  to  sum  up  his  opinions  on  this 
subject  by  quoting  the  well-known  lines, — 

"  For  modes  of  faith,  let  graceless  zealots  fight, 
He  can't  be  wrong  whose  life  is  in  the  right." 

One  of  the  entries  in  his  diary,  made  when  he  was  past 
eighty-four  years  of  age,  was  the  following :  — 

"From  the  doctrines  with  which  metaphysical  divines  have 
chosen  to  obscure  the  word  of  God,  such  as  predestination,  elec- 
tion, reprobation,  etc.,  I  turn  with  loathing  to  the  refreshing  assur- 
ance, which  to  my  mind  contains  the  substance  of  revealed  religion. 
*  In  every  nation  he  who  feareth  God  and  worketh  righteousness  is 
accepted  of  him/  " 

In  these  more  enlightened  days  it  is  easy  to  believe  this 
truth;  but  sixty  or  seventy  years  ago,  when  Josiah  Quincy 
was  forming  his  opinions,  few  persons  were  able  to  accept  it 
fully  and  heartily. 


THE  ORIGINAL: 


THE  INTERMEDIATE: 


THE  HARPSICHORD. 


THE  PRESENT: 


THE  PIANO  AMONG  US, 

AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  INSTRUMENT  FROM 
REMOTEST  TIMES. 

THE  piano,  one  hundred  and  sixty  years  after  its  inven- 
tion, in  spite  of  its  great  cost,  has  become  the  leading  musi- 
cal instrument  of  Christendom.  England  produces  thirty-five 
thousand  every  year ;  the  United  States,  thirty  thousand ; 
France,  fifteen  thousand ;  Germany,  perhaps,  ten  thousand  ; 
and  all  other  countries,  ten  thousand ;  making  a  total  of  one 
hundred  thousand.  It  is  computed  that  an  average  piano  is 
the  result  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  days'  work ;  and,  con- 
sequently, there  must  be  at  least  fifty  thousand  men  em- 
ployed in  the  business.  And  it  is  only  within  a  few  years 
that  the  making  of  these  noble  instruments  has  been  done 
on  anything  like  the  present  scale.  Messrs.  Broadwood,  of 
London,  who  have  made  in  all  one  hundred  and  twenty-nine 
thousand  pianos,  only  begin  to  count  at  the  year  1780 ;  and 
in  the  United  States  there  were  scarcely  fifty  pianos  a  year 
made  fifty  years  ago.  , 

We  need  scarcely  say  that  the  production  of  music  for  the 
piano  has  kept  pace  with  the  advance  of  the  instrument. 
Dr.  Burney  mentions,  in  his  History  of  Music  (Vol.  IV.  p. 
664),  that  when  he  came  to  London  in  1744,  "Handel's 
Harpsichord  Lessons  and  Organ  Concertos,  and  the  two 
First  Books  of  Scarletti's  Lessons,  were  all  the  good  music 
for  keyed  instruments  at  that  time  in  the  nation."  We 
have  at  this  moment  before  us  the  catalogue  of  music  sold 
by  one  house  in  Boston,  Oliver  Ditson  &  Co.  It  is  a  closely 


324  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

printed  volume  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  pages,  and  con- 
tains the  titles  of  about  thirty-three  thousand  pieces  of 
music,  designed  to  be  performed,  wholly  or  partly,  on  the 
piano.  By  far  the  greater  number  are  piano  music  pure  and 
simple.  It  is  not  a  very  rare  occurrence  for  a  new  piece  to 
have  a  sale  of  one  hundred  thousand  copies  in  the  United 
States.  A  composer  who  can  produce  the  kind  of  music 
that  pleases  the  greatest  number,  may  derive  a  revenue 
twenty  times  greater  than  Mozart  or  Beethoven  enjoyed 
in  their  most  prosperous  time.  There  are  trifling  waltzes 
and  songs  upon  the  list  of  Messrs.  Ditson,  which  have 
yielded  more  profit  than  Mozart  received  for  "Don 
Giovanni "  and  "  The  Magic  Flute "  together.  We  learn 
from  the  catalogue  just  mentioned,  that  the  composers  of 
music  have  an  advantage  over  the  authors  of  books,  in  being 
always  able  to  secure  a  publisher  for  their  productions. 
Messrs.  Ditson  announce  that  they  are  ready  and  willing  to 
publish  any  piece  of  music  by  any  composer  on  the  follow- 
ing easy  conditions  :  "  Three  dollars  per  page  for  engraving ; 
two  dollars  and  a  half  per  hundred  sheets  of  paper ;  and  one 
dollar  and  a  quarter  per  hundred  pages  for  printing."  At 
the  same  time  they  frankly  notify  ambitious  teachers,  that 
"not  one  piece  in  ten  pays  the  cost  of  getting  up,  and  not 
one  in  fifty  proves  a  success." 

The  piano,  though  its  recent  development  has  been  so 
rapid,  is  the  growth  of  ages,  and  we  can,  for  three  thousand 
years  or  more,  dimly  and  imperfectly  trace  its  growth.  The 
instrument,  indeed,  has  found  an  historian, — Dr.  Blmbault, 
of  London,  —  who  has  gathered  the  scattered  notices  of  its 
progress  into  a  handsome  quarto,  now  accessible  in  some  of 
our  public  libraries.  It  is  far  from  our  desire  to  make  a 
display  of  erudition ;  yet  perhaps  ladies  who  love  their  piano 
may  care  to  spend  a  minute  or  two  in  learning  how  it  came 


THE  PIANO  AMONG  US.  325 

to  be  the  splendid  triumph  of  human  ingenuity,  the  precious 
addition  to  the  happiness  of  existence,  which  they  now  find 
it  to  be.  "I  have  had  my  share  of  trouble,"  we  heard  a 
lady  say  the  other  day,  "but  my  piano  has  kept  me  happy." 
All  ladies  who  have  had  the  virtue  to  subdue  this  noble 
instrument  to  their  will,  can  say  something  similar  of  the 
solace  and  joy  they  daily  derive  from  it. 

The  Greek  legend  that  the  twang  of  Diana's  bow  suggested 
to  Apollo  the  invention  of  the  lyre,  was  not  a  mere  fancy ; 
for  the  first  stringed  instrument  of  which  we  have  any  trace 
in  ancienfc  sculpture  differed  from  an  ordinary  bow  only  in 
having  more  than  one  string.  A  two-stringed  bow  was, 
perhaps,  the  first  step  towards  the  grand  piano  of  to-day. 
Additional  strings  involved  the  strengthening  of  the  bow 
that  held  them;  and,  accordingly,  we  find  the  Egyptian 
harps,  discovered  in  the  catacombs  by  Wilkinson,  very  thick 
and  massive  in  the  lower  part  of  the  frame,  which  terminated 
sometimes  in  a  large  and  solid  female  head.  From  the  two- 
stringed  bow  to  these  huge  twelve-stringed  Egyptian  harps, 
six  feet  high  and  beautifully  finished  with  veneer,  inlaid  with 
ivory  and  mother-of-pearl,  no  one  can  say  how  many  centu- 
ries elapsed.  The  catgut  strings  of  the  harps  of  three 
thousand  years  ago  are  still  capable  of  giving  a  musical 
sound.  The  best  workmen  of  the  present  time,  we  are 
assured,  could  not  finish  a  harp  more  exquisitely  than  these 
are  finished  ;  yet  they  have  no  mechanism  for  tightening  or 
loosening  the  strings,  and  no  strings  except  such  as  were 
furnished  by  the  harmless,  necessary  cat.  The  Egyptian 
harp,  with  all  its  splendor  of  decoration,  was  a  rude  and 
barbaric  instrument. 

It  has  not  been  shown  that  Greece  or  Eome  added  one 
essential  improvement  to  the  stringed  instruments  which 
they  derived  from  older  nations.  The  Chickerings,  Stein- 


326  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

ways,  Erards,  and  Broad  woods  of  our  day  cannot  lay  a  finger 
upon  any  part  of  a  piano,  and  say  that  they  owe  it  to  the 
Greeks  or  to  the  Romans. 

The  Cithara  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  a  poor  thing  enough, 
in  the  form  of  a  large  P,  with  ten  strings  in  the  oval  part ; 
but  it  had  movable  pegs,  and  could  be  easily  tuned.  It  was, 
therefore,  a  step  toward  the  piano  of  the  French  Exposition 
in  1867. 

But  the  Psaltery  was  a  great  stride  forward.  This  instru- 
ment was  an  arrangement  of  strings  on  a  box.  Here  we 
have  the  principle  of  the  sounding-board, — a  thing  of  vital 
moment  to  the  piano,  and  one  upon  which  the  utmost  care  is 
bestowed  by  all  the  great  makers.  Whoever  first  thought 
of  stretching  strings  on  a  box  may  also  be  said  to  have  half 
invented  the  guitar  and  the  violin.  No  single  subsequent 
thought  has  been  so  fruitful  of  consequences  as  this  in  the 
improvement  of  stringed  instruments.  The  reader,  of 
course,  will  not  confound  the  psaltery  of  the  Middle  Ages 
with  the  psaltery  of  the  Hebrews,  respecting  which  nothing 
is  known.  The  translators  of  the  Old  Testament  assigned 
the  names  with  which  they  were  familiar  to  the  musical 
instruments  of  the  Jews. 

About  the  year  1200  we  arrive  at  the  Dulcimer,  which 
was  an  immense  psaltery,  with  improvements.  Upon  a 
harp-shaped  box,  eighteen  to  thirty-six  feet  long,  fifty  strings 
were  stretched,  which  the  player  struck  with  a  stick  or  a 
long-handled  hammer.  This  instrument  was  a  signal  advance 
toward  the  grand  piano.  It  was  a  piano,  without  its 
machinery. 

The  next  thing,  obviously,  must  have  been  to  contrive  a 
method  of  striking  the  strings  with  certainty  and  evenness  ; 
and,  accordingly,  we  find  indications  of  a  keyed  instrument 
after  the  year  1300,  called  the  Clavicytherium,  or  keyed 


THE   PIANO  AMONG  US.  327 

cithara.  The  invention  of  keys  permitted  the  strings  to  be 
covered  over,  and  therefore  the  strings  of  the  clavicytherium 
were  enclosed  in  a  box,  instead  of  being  stretched  on  a  box. 
The  first  keys  were  merely  long  levers  with  a  nub  at  the  end 
of  them,  mounted  on  a  pivot,  which  the  player  canted  up  at 
the  strings  on  the  see-saw  principle.  It  has  required  four 
hundred  years  to  bring  the  mechanism  of  the  piano  key  to 
its  present  admirable  perfection.  The  clavicytherium  was 
usually  a  very  small  instrument,  —  an  oblong  box,  three  or 
four  feet  in  length,  that  could  be  lifted  by  a  girl  of  fourteen. 
The  clavichord  and  manichord,  which  we  read  of  in  Mozart's 
letters,  were  only  improved  and  better-made  clavicytheria. 
How  affecting  the  thought,  that  the  divine  Mozart  had  noth- 
ing better  on  which  to  try  the  ravishing  airs  of  "  The  Magic 
Flute"  than  a  wretched  box  of  brass  wires,  twanged  with 
pieces  of  quill !  So  it  is  always,  and  in  all  branches  of  art. 
Shakespeare's  plays,  Titian's  pictures,  the  great  cathedrals, 
Newton's  discoveries,  Mozart's  and  Handel's  music,  were 
executed  while  the  implements  of  art  and  science  were  still 
very  rude. 

Queen  Elizabeth's  instrument,  the  Virginals,  was  a  box 
of  strings,  with  improved  keys,  and  mounted  on  four  legs, 
In  other  words  it  was  a  small  and  very  bad  piano.  The 
excellent  Pepys,  in  his  account  of  the  great  fire  of  London 
of  1666,  says:  "River  full  of  lighters  and  boats  taking  in 
goods,  and  good  goods  swimming  in  the  water;  and  only  I 
observed  that  hardly  one  lighter  or  boat  in  three  that  had  the 
goods  of  a  house  in  it,  but  there  were  a  pair  of  virginalls  in 
it."  Why  "  a  pair "  ?  For  the  same  reason  that  induces 
many  persons  to  say  "  a  pair  of  stairs,"  and  "a  pair  of  com- 
passes "  ;  that  is,  no  reason  at  all. 

It  is  plain  that  the  virginals,  or  virgin's  clavichord,  was  far 
from  holding  the  rank  among  musical  instruments  which  the 

21 


328  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

piano  now  possesses.  If  any  of  our  readers  should  ever  come 
upon  a  thin  folio,  entitled  "  Musick's  Monument "  (London, 
1676),  we  advise  him  to  clutch  it,  retire  from  the  haunts  of 
men,  and  abandon  himself  to  the  delight  of  reading  the 
Izaak  Walton  of  music.  It  is  a  most  quaint  and  curious 
treatise  upon  "the  Noble  Lute,  the  best  of  instruments," 
with  a  chapter  upon  "the  Generous  Viol,"  by  Thomas  Mace, 
"  one  of  the  clerks  of  Trinity  College  in  the  University  of 
Cambridge."  Master  Mace  deigns  not  to  mention  keyed 
instruments,  probably  regarding  keys  as  old  sailors  regard 
the  lubber's  hole, —  fit  only  for  greenhorns.  The  "Noble 
Lute,"  of  which  Thomas  Mace  discourses,  was  a  large,  heavy, 
pot-bellied  guitar  with  many  strings.  "We  learn  from  this 
enthusiastic  author,  that  the  noble  lute  had  been  calumniated 
by  some  ignorant  persons  ;  and  it  is  in  refuting  their  calum- 
nious imputations  that  he  pours  out  a  torrent  of  knowledge 
upon  his  beloved  instrument,  and  upon  the  state  of  music  in 
England  in  1675.  In  reply  to  the  charge,  that  the  noble 
lute  was  a  very  hard  instrument  to  play  upon,  he  gives 
posterity  a  piece  of  history.  That  the  lute  was  hard  once, 
he  confesses,  but  asserts  that  "it  is  now  easie,  and  very 
familiar." 

"  The  First  and  Chief  Reason  that  it  was  Hard  in  former  Times, 
was,  Because  they  had  to  their  Lutes  but  Few  Strings  ;  viz.  to  some 
10,  some  12,  and  some  14  Strings,  which  in  the  beginning  of  my 
Time  were  almost  altogether  in  use ;  (and  is  this  present  Year 
1675,  fifty-four  years  since  I  first  began  to  undertake  That  Instru- 
ment.) But  soon  after,  they  began  to  adde  more  Strings  unto 
Their  Lutes,  so  that  we  had  Lutes  of  16,  18,  and  20  Strings ; 
which  they  finding  to  be  so  Great  a  Convenience,  staj^ed  not  long 
till  they  added  more  to  the  Number  of  24,  where  we  now  rest  sat- 
isfied ;  only  upon  my  Theorboes  I  put  26  Strings,  for  some  Good 
Reasons  I  shall  be  able  to  give  in  due  Time  and  Place." 


THE    PIANO   AMONG   US.  329 

Another  aspersion  upon  the  noble  lute  was,  that  it  was  "a 
Woman's  Instrument."  Master  Mace  gallantly  observes,  that 
if  this  were  true,  he  cannot  understand  why  it  should  suffer 
any  disparagement  on  that  account,  "  but  rather  that  it  should 
have  the  more  Reputation  and  Honour." 

There  are  passages  in  this  ancient  book  which  take  us 
back  so  agreeably  to  the  concert-rooms  and  parlors  of  two 
hundred  years  ago,  and  give  us  such  an  insight  into  the 
musical  resources  of  our  forefathers,  that  we  shall  venture 
to  copy  two  or  three  of  them.  The  following  brief  dis- 
course upon  Pegs  is  very  amusing:  — 

"  And  you  must  know,  that  from  the  Badness  of  the  Pegs,  arise 
several  Inconveniences ;  The  first  I  have  named,  viz.  the  Loss  of 
Labour.  The  2d.  is,  the  Loss  of  Time ;  for  I  have  known  some  so 
extreme  long  in  Tuning  their  Lutes  and  Viols,  by  reason  only  of 
#ad  Pegs,  that  They  have  wearied  out  their  Auditors  before  they 
began  to  Play.  A  3d.  Inconvenience  is,  that  oftentimes,  if  a  High- 
stretch'd  small  String  happen  to  slip  down,  t  is  in  great  danger  to 
break  at  the  next  winding  up,  especially  in  wet  moist  weather,  and 
that  it  have  been  long  slack.  The  4th.  is,  that  when  a  String 
hath  been  slipt  back,  it  will  not  stand  in  Tune,  under  many  Amend- 
ments ;  for  it  is  continually  in  stretching  itself,  till  it  come  to  Its 
highest  stretch.  A  5th.  is,  that  in  the  midst  of  a  Consort,  All  the 
Company  must  leave  off,  because  of  some  Eminent  String  slipping. 
A  6th.  is,  that  sometimes  ye  shall  have  such  a  Rap  upon  the 
Knuckles,  by  a  sharp-edg'd  Peg,  and  a  stiff  strong  String,  that  the 
very  Skin  will  be  taken  off.  And  Tthly.  It  is  oftentimes  an  occa- 
sion of  the  Thrusting  off  the  Treble-Peg-Nut,  and  sometimes  of 
the  Upper  Long  Head ;  And  I  have  seen  the  Neck  of  an  Old  Viol, 
thrust  off  into  two  pieces,  by  reason  of  the  Badness  of  the  Pegs, 
meerly  with  the  Anger  and  hasty  Choller  of  Him  that  has  been 
Tuning.  Now  I  say  that  These  are  very  Great  Inconveniences,  and 
do  adde  much  to  the  Trouble  and  Hardness  of  the  Instrument.  I 
shall  therefore  inform  you  how  ye  may  Help  All  These  with  Ease ; 


330  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

viz.  Thus.  When  you  perceive  any  Peg  to  be  troubled  with  the 
slippery  Disease,  assure  yourself  he  will  never  grow  better  of  Him- 
self, without  some  of  Your  Care ;  Therefore  take  Him  out,  and 
examine  the  Cause." 

He  gives  advice  with  regard  to  the  preservation  of  the 
Lute  in  the  moist  English  climate  :  — 

"  And  that  you  may  know  how  to  shelter  your  Lute,  in  the  worst 
of  111  weathers  (which  is  moist)  you  shall  do  well,  ever  when  you 
Lay  it  by  in  the  day-time,  to  put  it  into  a  Bed,  that  is  constantly 
used,  between  the  Rug  and  Blanket ;  but  never  between  the  Sheets, 
because  they  may  be  moist  with  Sweat,  etc. 

"  This  is  the  most  absolute  and  best  place  to  keep  It  in  always, 
by  which  doing,  you  will  find  many  Great  Conveniences  which  I 
shall  here  set  down 

"  Therefore,  a  Bed  will  secure  from  all  These  Inconveniences, 
and  keep  your  Glew  so  Hard  as  Glass,  and  All  safe  and  sure ;  only 
to  be  excepted,  That  no  Person  be  so  inconsiderate,  as  to  Tumble 
down  upon  the  Bed,  whilst  the  Lute  is  There ;  For  I  have  known 
several  Good  Lutes  spoiled  with  such  a  trick." 

We  may  infer  from  Master  Mace  his  work,  that  the  trivial 
virginals  were  gaining  in  popular  estimation  upon  the  nobler 
instrument  which  is  the  theme  of  his  eulogy.  He  has  no 
patience  with  those  who  object  to  his  beloved  lute  that  it  is 
out  of  fashion.  He  remarks  upon  this  subject  in  a  truly 
delicious  strain :  — 

"  I  cannot  understand,  how  Arts  and  Sciences  should  be  subject 
unto  any  such  Phantastical,  Giddy,  or  Inconsiderate  Toyish  Con- 
ceits, as  ever  to  be  said  to  be  in  Fashion,  or  out  of  Fashion.  I 
remember  there  was  a  Fashion,  not  many  years  since,  for  Women 
in  their  Apparel  to  be  so  Pent  up  by  the  Straitness,  and  Stiffness 
of  their  Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves,  that  They  could  not  so  much  as 
Scratch  Their  Heads,  for  the  Necessary  Remove  of  a  Biting  Louse ; 
nor  Elevate  their  Arms  scarcely  to  feed  themselves  Handsomly ; 


THE   PIANO   AMONG  US.  331 

nor  Carve  a  Dish  of  Meat  at  a  Table,  but  their  whole  Body  must 
needs  Bend  towards  the  dish.  This  must  needs  be  concluded  by 
Reason,  a  most  Vnreasonable,  and  Inconvenient  Fashion;  and 
They  as  Vnreasonable  Inconsiderate  who  would  be  so  Abus'd,  and 
Bound  up.  I  confess  It  was  a  very  Good  Fashion,  for  some  such 
Viragoes,  who  were  us'd  to  Scratch  their  Husbands  Faces  or  Eyes, 
and  to  pull  them  down  by  the  Coxcombes.  And  I  am  subject  to 
think,  It  was  ameer  Rogery  in  the  Combination,  or  Club-Council 
of  the  Taylors,  to  Abuse  the  Women  in  That  Fashion,  in  Revenge 
of  some  of  the  Curst  Dames  their  Wives." 

Some  lute-makers,  this  author  informs  us,  were  so  famous 
in  Europe,  that  he  had  seen  lutes  of  their  making,  "  pittifull, 
old,  batter'd,  crack'd  things,"  that  were  valued  at  a  hundred 
pounds  sterling  each ;  and  he  had  often  seen  lutes  of  three 
or  four  pounds'  value  "  far  more  illustrious  and  taking  to  a 
Common  eye."  In  refuting  the  K  aspersion  that  one  had  as 
good  keep  a  horse  (for  cost)  as  a  Lute,"  he  declares,  that  he 
never  in  his  life  "  took  more  than  five  shillings  the  quarter  to 
maintain  a  Lute  with  strings,  only  for  the  first  stringing  I 
ever  took  ten  shillings."  He  says,  however:  "I  do  confess 
Those  who  will  be  Prodigal  and  Extraordinary  Curious,  may 
spend  as  much  as  may  maintain  two  or  three  Horses,  and 
Men  to  ride  upon  them  too,  if  they  please.  But  20*.  per 
ann.  is  an  Ordinary  Charge ;  and  much  more  they  need  not 
spend,  to  practise  very  hard." 

Keyed  instruments,  despite  the  remonstrances  of  the 
iutists,  continued  to  advance  toward  their  present  suprem- 
acy. As  often  as  an  important  improvement  was  introduced, 
the  instrument  changed  its  name,  just  as  in  our  day  the 
melodeon  was  improved  into  the  harmonium,  then  into  the 
organ-harmonium,  and  finally  into  the  cabinet  organ.  The 
virginals  of  1600  became  the  spinet  of  1700,  —  so  called 
because  the  pieces  of  quill  employed  in  twanging  the  strings 


332  TRIUMPHS  or  ENTERPRISE. 

resembled  thorns,  and  spina,  in  Latin,  means  thorn.  Any 
lady  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  mount  to  the  fourth  story 
of  Messrs.  Cnickering's  piano  store  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  may  see  such  a  spinet  as  Mrs.  Washington,  Mrs. 
Adams,  and  Mrs.  Hamilton  played  upon  when  they  were 
little  girls.  It  is  a  small,  harp-shaped  instrument  on  legs, 
exceedingly  coarse  and  clumsy  in  its  construction,  —  the 
case  rough  and  unpolished,  the  legs  like  those  of  a  kitchen 
table,  with  wooden  castors  such  as  were  formerly  used  in 
the  construction  of  cheap  bedsteads  of  the  "  trundle  "  vari- 
ety. The  keys,  however,  are  much  like  those  now  in  use, 
though  they  are  fewer  in  number,  and  the  ivory  is  yellow 
with  age.  If  the  reader  would  know  the  tone  of  this  ancient 
instrument,  he  has  but  to  stretch  a  brass  wire  across  a  box 
between  two  nails,  and  twang  it  with  a  short  pointed 
piece  of  quill.  And  if  the  reader  would  know  how  much 
better  the  year  1871  is  than  the  year  1700,  he  may  first  hear 
this  spinet  played  upon  in  Messrs.  Chickerings'  dusty  garret, 
and  then  descend  to  one  of  the  floors  below,  and  listen  to 
the  round,  full,  brilliant  singing  of  a  Chickering  grand, 
of  the  present  illustrious  year.  By  as  much  as  that  grand 
piano  is  better  than  that  poor  little  spinet,  by  so  much  is  the 
present  time  better  than  the  days  when  Louis  XIV.  was 
king.  If  any  intelligent  person  doubts  it,  it  is  either  because 
he  does  not  know  that  age,  or  because  he  does  not  know 
this  age. 

The  spinet  expanded  into  the  harpsichord,  the  leading 
instrument  from  1700  to  1800.  A  harpsichord  was  nothing 
but  a  very  large  and  powerful  spinet.  Some  of  them  had 
two  strings  for  each  note ;  some  had  three  ;  some  had  three 
kinds  of  strings,  —  catgut,  brass,  and  steel ;  and  some  were 
painted  and  decorated  in  the  most  gorgeous  style.  Freder- 
ick the  Great  had  one  made  for  him  in  London,  with  silver 


THE  PIANO   AMONG  U8.  333 

hinges,  silver  pedals,  inlaid  case,  and  tortoise-shell  front,  at 
a  cost  of  two  hundred  guineas.  Every  part  of  the  construc- 
tion of  the  spinet  was  improved,  and  many  new  minor 
devices  were  added ;  but  the  harpsichord,  in  its  best  estate, 
was  nothing  but  a  spinet,  because  its  strings  were  always 
twanged  by  a  piece  of  quill.  How  astonished  would  an 
audience  be  to  hear  a  harpsichord  of  1750,  and  to  be  in- 
formed that  such  an  instrument  Handel  felt  himself  fortunate 
to  possess ! 

Next,  the  piano,  — invented  at  Florence  in  1710,  by  Bar- 
tolommeo  Cristofali. 

The  essential  difference  between  a  harpsichord  and  a  piano 
is  described  by  the  first  name  given  to  the  piano,  which  was 
hammer-harpsichord,  i.  e.  a  harpsichord  the  strings  of  which 
were  struck  by  hammers,  not  twanged  by  quills.  The  next 
name  given  to  it  was  forte-piano,  which  signified  soft,  with 
power;  and  this  name  became  piano-forte,  which  it  still 
retains.  One  hundred  years  were  required  to  prove  to  the 
musical  public  the  value  of  an  invention  without  which  no. 
further  development  of  stringed  instruments  had  been  pos- 
sible. No  improvement  in  the  mere  mechanism  of  the  harp- 
sichord could  ever  have  overcome  the  trivial  effect  of  the 
twanging  of  the  strings  by  pieces  of  quill ;  but  the  moment 
the  hammer  principle  was  introduced,  nothing  was  wanting 
but  improved  mechanism  to  make  it  universal.  It  required, 
however,  a  century  to  produce  the  improvements  sufficient 
to  give  the  piano  equal  standing  with  the  harpsichord.  The 
first  pianos  gave  forth  a  dull  and  feeble  sound  to  ears  accus- 
tomed to  the  clear  and  harp-like  notes  of  the  fashionable 
instrument. 

In  that  same  upper  room  of  Messrs.  Chickering,  near  the 
spinet  just  mentioned,  there  is  an  instrument,  made  perhaps 
about  the  year  1800,  which  explains  why  the  piano  was 


334  TRIUMPHS   OP   ENTERPRISE. 

so  slow  in  making  its  way.  It  resembles  in  form  and  size  a 
grand  piano  of  the  present  time,  though  of  coarsest  finish 
and  most  primitive  construction,  with  thin,  square,  kitchen- 
table  legs,  and  wooden  knobs  for  castors.  This  interesting 
instrument  has  two  rows  of  keys,  and  is  both  a  harpsichord 
and  a  piano,  —  one  set  of  keys  twanging  the  wires,  and  the 
other  set  striking  them.  The  effect  of  the  piano  notes  is  so 
faint  and  dull,  that  we  cannot  wonder  at  the  general  prefer- 
ence for  the  harpsichord  for  so  many  years.  It  appears  to 
have  been  a  common  thing  in  the  last  century  to  combine 
two-  or  more  instruments  in  one.  Dr.  Charles  Burney, 
writing  in  1770,  mentions  "a  very  curious  keyed  instru- 
ment," made  under  the  direction  of  Frederick  II.  of  Prussia. 
"  It  is  in  shape  like  a  large  clavichord,  has  several  changes 
of  stops,  and  is  occasionally  a  harp,  a  harpsichord,  a  lute,  or 
piano-forte ;  but  the  most  curious  property  of  this  instru- 
ment is,  that,  by  drawing  out  the  keys,  the  hammers  are 
transferred  to  different  strings.  By  which  means  a  compo- 
sition may  be  transposed  half  a  note,  a  whole  note,  or  a  flat 
third  lower  at  pleasure,  without  the  embarrassment  of  differ- 
ent notes  or  clefs,  real  or  imaginary." 

The  same  sprightly  author  tells  us  of  "  a  fine  Rucker  harp- 
sichord, which  he  has  had  painted  inside  and  out  with  as 
much  delicacy  as  the  finest  coach,  or  even  snuff-box,  I  ever 
saw  at  Paris.  On  the  outside  is  the  birth  of  Venus  ;  and  on 
the  inside  of  the  cover,  the  story  of  Rameau's  most  famous 
opera,  Castor  and  Pollux.  Earth,  Hell,  and  Elysium  are 
there  represented;  in  Elysium,  sitting  on  a  bank,  with  a 
lyre  in  his  hand,  is  that  celebrated  composer  himself." 

This  gay  instrument  was  at  Paris.  In  Italy,  the  native 
home  of  music,  the  keyed  instruments,  in  1770,  Dr.  Burney 
says,  were  exceedingly  inferior  to  those  of  the  North  of 
Europe.  "Throughout  Italy,  they  have  generally  little 


THE   PIANO  AMONG  US.  335 

octave  spinets  to  accompany  singing  in  private  houses,  some- 
times in  a  triangular  form,  but  more  frequently  in  the  shape 
of  an  old  virginal ;  of  which  the  keys  are  so  noisy  and  the 
tone  is  so  feeble,  that  more  wood  is  heard  than  wire.  I 
found  three  English  harpsichords  in  the  three  principal  cities 
of  Italy,  which  are  regarded  by  the  Italians  as  so  many  phe- 
nomena." 

To  this  day  Italy  depends  upon  foreign  countries  for  her 
best  musical  instruments.  Italy  can  as  little  make  a  grand 
piano  as  America  can  compose  a  grand  opera. 

The  history  of  the  piano  from  1710  to  1871  is  nothing  but 
a  history  of  the  improved  mechanism  of  the  instrument. 
The  moment  the  idea  was  conceived  of  striking  the  strings 
with  hammers,  unlimited  improvement  was  possible ;  and 
though  the  piano  of  to-day  is  covered  all  over  with  ingenious 
devices,  the  great,  essential  improvements  are  few  in  num- 
ber. The  hammer,  for  example,  may  contain  one  hundred 
ingenuities,  but  they  are  all  included  in  the  device  of  cover- 
ing the  first  wooden  hammers  with  cloth ;  and  the  master- 
thought  of  making  the  whole  frame  of  the  piano  of  iron,  sug- 
gested the  line  of  improvement  which  secures  the  supremacy 
of  the  piano  over  all  other  stringed  instruments  forever. 

Sebastian  Erard,  the  son  of  a  Strasbourg  upholsterer, 
went  to  Paris,  a  poor  orphan  of  sixteen,  in  the  year  1768, 
and,  finding  employment  in  the  establishment  of  a  harpsi- 
chord-maker, rose  rapidly  to  the  foremanship  of  the  shop, 
and  was  soon  in  business  for  himself  as  a  maker  of  harpsi- 
chords, harps,  and  pianos.  To  him,  perhaps,  more  than  to 
any  other  individual,  the  fine  interior  mechanism  of  the  piano 
is  indebted ;  and  the  house  founded  by  Sebastian  Erard  still 
produces  the  pianos  which  enjoy  the  most  extensive  reputa- 
tion in  the  Old  World.  He  may  be  said  to  have  created  the 
"action"  of  the  piano,  though  his  devices  have  been  subse- 


336  TKIUMPHS  or  ENTERPRISE. 

quently  improved  upon  by  others.  He  found  the  piano  in 
1768  feeble  and  unknown;  he  left  it,  at  his  death  in  1831, 
the  most  powerful,  pleasing,  and  popular  stringed  instru- 
ment in  existence ;  and  besides  gaining  a  colossal  fortune  for 
himself,  he  bequeathed  to  his  nephew,  Pierre  Erard,  the  most 
celebrated  manufactory  of  pianos  in  the  world.  Next  to 
Erard  ranks  John  Broad  wood,  a  Scotchman,  who  came  to 
London  about  the  time  of  Erard's  arrival  in  Paris,  and,  like 
him,  procured  employment  with  a  harpsichord-maker,  the 
most  noted  one  in  England.  John  Broadwood  was  a  "  good 
apprentice,"  married  his  master's  daughter,  inherited  his  busi- 
ness, and  carried  it  on  with  such  success,  that,  to-day,  the 
house  of  Broadwood  and  Sons  is  the  first  of  its  line  in  Eng- 
land. John  Broadwood  was  chiefly  meritorious  for  a  general 
improvement  in  the  construction  of  the  instrument.  If  he 
did  not  originate  many  important  devices,  he  was  eager  to 
adopt  those  of  others,  and  he  made  the  whole  instrument 
with  British  thoroughness.  The  strings,  the  action,  the  case, 
the  pedals,  and  all  the  numberless  details  of  mechanism 
received  his  thoughtful  attention,  and  show  to  the  present 
time  traces  of  his  honest  and  intelligent  mind.  It  was  in 
this  John  Broadwood's  factory,  that  a  poor  German  boy 
named  John  Jacob  Astor  earned  the  few  pounds  that  paid  his 
passage  to  America,  and  bought  the  seven  flutes  which  were 
the  foundation  of  the  great  Astor  estate.  For  several  years, 
the  sale  of  the  Broadwood  pianos  in  New  York  was  an 
important  part  of  Mr.  Astor's  business.  He  used  to  sell  his 
furs  in  London,  and  invest  part  of  the  proceeds  in  pianos, 
for  exportation  to  New  York. 

America  began  early  to  try  her  hand  at  improving  the 
instrument.  Mr.  Jefferson,  in  the  year  1800,  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  his  daughter  Martha,  speaks  of  "a  very  ingenious, 
modest,  and  poor  young  man "  in  Philadelphia,  who  "  has 


THE   PIANO   AMONG   US.  337 

invented  one  of  the  prettiest  improvements  in  the  forte-piano 
I  have  ever  seen."  Mr.  Jefferson,  who  was  himself  a  player 
upon  the  violin,  and  had  same  little  skill  upon  the  harpsi- 
chord, adds,  "It  has  tempted  me  to  engage  one  for  Monti- 
cello."  This  instrument  was  an  upright  piano,  and  we  have 
found  no  mention  of  an  upright  of  an  earlier  date.  "  His 
strings,"  says  Mr.  Jefferson,  "are  perpendicular,  and  he 
contrives  within  that  height "  (not  given  in  the  published 
extract)  "  to  give  his  strings  the  same  length  as  in  the  grand 
forte-piano,  and  fixes  his  three  unisons  to  the  same  screw, 
which  screw  is  in  the  direction  of  the  strings,  and  therefore 
never  yields.  It  scarcely  gets  out  of  tune  at  all,  and  then, 
for  the  most  part,  the  three  unisons  are  tuned  at  once."  This 
is  an  interesting  passage ;  for,  although  the  "  forte-pianos  " 
of  this  modest  young  man  have  left  no  trace  upon  the  history 
of  the  instrument,  it  shows  that  America  had  no  sooner  cast 
an  eye  upon  its  mechanism  than  she  set  to  work  improving 
it.  Can  it  be  that  the  upright  piano  was  an  American  inven- 
tion? It  may  be.  The  Messrs.  Broad  wood,  in  the  little 
book  which  lay  upon  their  pianos  in  the  Exhibition  of  1851, 
say  that  the  first  vertical  or  cabinet  pianos  were  constructed 
by  William  Southwell,  of  their  house,  in  1804,  four  years 
after  the  date  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  letter. 

After  1800  there  were  a  few  pianos  made  every  year  in 
the  United  States,  but  none  that  could  compare  with  the  best 
Erards  and  Broadwoods,  until  the  Chickering  era,  which 
began  in  1823. 

The  two  Americans  to  whom  music  is  most  indebted  in  the 
United  States,  are  Jonas  Chickeriug,  piano-maker,  born  in 
New  Hampshire  in  1798,  and  Lowell  Mason,  singing  teacher 
and  composer  of  church  tunes,  born  in  Massachusetts  in 
1792.  While  Lowell  Mason  was  creating  the  taste  for  music, 
Jonas  Chickering  was  improving  the  instrument  by  which 


338  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

musical  taste  is  chiefly  gratified ;  and  both  being  established 
in  Boston,  each  of  them  was  instrumental  in  advancing  the 
fortunes  of  the  other.  Mr.  Mason  recommended  the  Chick- 
ering  piano  to  his  multitudinous  classes  and  choirs,  and  thus 
powerfully  aided  to  give  that  extent  to  Mr.  Chickering's 
business  which  is  necessary  to  the  production  of  the  best 
work.  Both  of  them  began  their  musical  career,  we  may 
say,  in  childhood ;  for  Jonas  Chickering  was  only  a  cabinet- 
maker's apprentice  when  he  astonished  his  native  village  by 
putting  in  excellent  playing  order  a  battered  old  piano,  long 
before  laid  aside  ;  and  Lowell  Mason,  at  sixteen,  was  already 
leading  a  large  church  choir,  and  drilling  a  brass  band.  The 
undertaking  of  this  brass  band  by  a  boy  was  an  amusing  in- 
stance of  Yankee  audacity;  for  when  the  youth  presented 
himself  to  the  newly  formed  band  to  give  them  their  first 
lesson,  he  found  so  many  instruments  in  their  hands  which 
he  had  never  seen  nor  heard  of,  that  he  could  not  proceed. 
"Gentlemen,"  said  he,  "I  see  that  a  good  many  of  your 
instruments  are  out  of  order,  and  most  of  them  need  a  little 
oil,  or  something  of  the  kind.  Our  best  plan  will  be  to 
adjourn  for  a  week.  Leave  all  your  instruments  with  me, 
and  I  will  have  them  in  perfect  condition  by  the  time  we 
meet  again."  Before  the  band  again  came  together,  the 
young  teacher,  by  working  night  and  day,  had  gained  a  suffi- 
cient insight  into  the  nature  of  the  instruments  to  instruct 
those  who  knew  nothing  of  them. 

Jonas  Chickering  was  essentially  a  mechanic,  —  a  most 
skilful,  patient,  thoughtful,  faithful  mechanic, — and  it  was 
his  excellence  as  a  mechanic  which  enabled  him  to  rear  an 
establishment  which,  beginning  with  one  or  two  pianos  a 
month,  was  producing,  at  the  death  of  the  founder,  in  1853, 
fifteen  hundred  pianos  a  year.  It  was  he  who  introduced 
into  the  piano  the  full  iron  frame.  It  was  he  who  first  made 


THE    PIANO   AMONG   US.  339 

American  pianos  that  were  equal  to  the  best  imported 
ones.  He  is  universally  recognized  as  the  true  founder  of 
the  manufacture  of  the  piano  in  the  United  States.  No  man 
has,  perhaps,  so  nobly  illustrated  the  character  of  the  Ameri- 
can mechanic,  or  more  honored  the  name  of  American 
citizen.  He  was  the  soul  of  benevolence,  truth,  and  honor. 
When  we  have  recovered  a  little  more  from  the  illusions 
which  invest  "public  men  "  with  supreme  importance,  we 
shall  better  know  how  to  value  those  heroes  of  the  apron, 
who,  by  a  life  of  conscientious  toil,  place  a  new  source  of 
happiness,  or  of  force,  within  the  reach  of  their  fellow- 
citizens. 

Henry  Steinway,  the  founder  of  the  great  house  of  Stein 
way  and  Sons,  has  had  a  career  not  unlike  that  of  Mr. 
Chickering.  He  also,  in  his  native  Brunswick,  amused  his 
boyhood  by  repairing  old  instruments  of  music,  and  making 
new  ones.  He  made  a  cithara  and  a  guitar  for  himself  with 
only  such  tools  as  a  boy  can  command.  He  also  was 
apprenticed  to  a  cabinet-maker,  and  was  drawn  away,  by 
natural  bias,  from  the  business  he  had  learned,  to  the  making 
of  organs  and  pianos.  For  many  years  he  was  a  German 
piano-maker,  producing,  in  the  slow,  German  manner,  two 
or  three  excellent  instruments  a  month ;  striving  ever  after 
higher  excellence,  and  growing  more  and  more  dissatisfied 
with  the  limited  sphere  in  which  the  inhabitant  of  a  small 
German  state  necessarily  works.  In  1849,  being  then  past 
fifty  years  of  age,  and  the  father  of  four  intelligent  and 
gifted  sons,  he  looked  to  America  for  a  wider  range  and  a 
more  promising  home  for  his  boys.  With  German  prudence, 
he  sent  one  of  them  to  New  York  to  see  what  prospect  there 
might  be  there  for  another  maker  of  pianos.  Charles  Stein- 
way  came,  saw,  approved,  returned,  reported ;  and  in  1850 
all  the  family  reached  New  York,  except  the  eldest  son. 


o40  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTEEPEISE. 

Theodore,  who  succeeded  to  his  father's  business  in  Bruns- 
wick. Henry  Steinway  again  showed  himself  wise  in  not 
immediately  going  into  business.  Depositing  the  capital  he 
had  brought  with  him  in  a  safe  place,  he  put  on  once  more 
the  journeyman's  apron,  and  worked  for  three  years  in  a 
New  York  piano  factory  to  learn  the  ways  of  the  trade  in 
America ;  and  his  sons  obtained  similar  employment,  —  one 
of  them,  fortunately,  becoming  a  tuner,  which  brought  him 
into  relations  with  many  music-teachers.  During  these  three 
years,  their  knowledge  and  their  capital  increased  every  day, 
for  they  lived  as  wise  men  in  such  circumstances  do  live 
who  mean  to  control  their  destiny.  In  plain  English,  they 
kept  their  eyes  open,  and  lived  on  half  their  income.  In 
1853,  in  a  small  back  shop  in  Varick  Street,  with  infinite 
pains,  they  made  their  first  piano,  and  a  number  of  teachers 
and  amateurs  were  invited  to  listen  to  it.  It  was  warmly 
approved  and  speedily  sold.  Ten  men  were  employed,  who 
produced  for  the  next  two  years  one  piano  a  week.  In 
1855,  the  Messrs.  Steinway,  still  unknown  to  the  public, 
placed  one  of  their  best  instruments  in  the  New  York  Crys- 
tal Palace  Exhibition.  A  member  of  the  musical  jury  has 
recorded  the  scene  which  occurred  when  the  jury  came  to 
this  unknown  competitor  :  — 

"They  were  pursuing  their  rounds,  and  performing  their  duties 
with  an  ease  and  facility  that  promised  a  speedy  termination  to 
their  labors,  when  suddenly  they  came  upon  an  instrument  that, 
from  its  external  appearance,  —  solidly  rich,  yet  free  from  the 
frippery  that  was  then  rather  in  fashion,  —  attracted  their  atten- 
tion. One  of  the  company  opened  the  case,  and  carelessly  struck 
a  few  chords.  The  others  were  doing  the  same  with  its  neighbors, 
but  somehow  they  ceased  to  chatter  when  the  other  instrument 
began  to  speak.  One  by  one  the  jurors  gathered  round  the  strange 
polyphonist,  and,  without  a  word  being  spoken,  every  one  knew 


THE   PIANO   AMONG  US.  341 

that  it  was  the  best  piano-forte  in  the  Exhibition.  The  jurors 
were  true  to  their  duties.  It  is  possible  that  some  of  them  had 
predilections  in  favor  of  other  makers ;  it  is  certain  that  one  of 
them  had,  —  the  writer  of  the  present  notice.  But  when  the  time 
for  the  award  came,  there  was  no  argument,  no  discussion,  no  bare 
presentment  of  minor  claims ;  nothing,  in  fact,  but  a  hearty  in- 
dorsement of  the  singular  merits  of  the  strange  instrument." 

From  that  time  the  Stein  ways  made  rapid  progress.  The 
tide  of  California  gold  was  flowing  in,  and  every  day  some 
one  was  getting  rich  enough  to  treat  his  family  to  a  new 
piano.  It  was  the  Messrs.  Stein  way  who  chiefly  supplied 
the  new  demand,  without  lessening  by  one  instrument  a 
month  the  business  of  older  houses.  Various  improvements 
in  the  framing  and  mechanism  of  the  piano  have  been 
invented  and  introduced  by  them ;  and,  while  some  members 
of  the  family  have  superintended  the  manufacture,  others 
have  conducted  the  not  less  difficult  business  of  selling. 
Until  last  year,  the  father  of  the  family,  in  the  dress  of  a 
workman,  attended  daily  at  the  factory,  as  vigilant  and 
active  as  ever,  though  then  past  seventy ;  and  his  surviving 
sons  were  as  laboriously  engaged  in  assisting  him  as  they 
were  in  the  infancy  of  the  establishment. 

To  visit  one  of  our  large  manufactories  of  pianos  is  a  les- 
son in  the  noble  art  of  taking  pains.  Genius  itself,  says 
Carlyle,  means,  first  of  all,  "a  transcendent  capacity  for 
taking  trouble."  Everywhere  in  these  vast  and  interesting 
establishments  we  find  what  we  may  call  the  perfection 
of  painstaking. 

The  construction  of  an  American  piano  is  a  continual  act 
of  defensive  warfare  against  the  future  inroads  of  our  cli- 
mate, — a  climate  which  is  polar  for  a  few  days  in  January, 
tropical  for  a  week  or  two  in  July,  Nova-Scotian  now  and 
then  in  November,  and  at  all  times  most  trying  to  the 


342  TEIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

finer  woods,  leathers,  and  fabrics.  To  make  a  piano  is  not 
so  difficult ;  but  to  make  one  that  will  stand  in  America,  — 
that  is  very  difficult.  In  the  rear  of  Messrs.  Steinways' 
factory  there  is  a  yard  for  seasoning  timber,  which  usually 
contains  an  amount  of  material  equal  to  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  ordinary  boards,  an  inch  thick  and  twelve  feet 
long ;  and  there  it  remains  from  four  months  to  five  years, 
according  to  its  nature  and  magnitude.  Most  of  the  timber 
used  in  an  American  piano  requires  two  years'  seasoning  at 
least.  From  this  yard  it  is  transferred  to  the  steam-drying 
house,  where  it  remains  subjected  to  a  high  temperature  for 
three  months.  The  wood  has  then  lost  nearly  all  the  warp 
there  ever  was  in  it,  and  the  temperature  may  change  fifty 
degrees  in  twelve  hours  (as  it  does  sometimes  in  New  York) 
without  seriously  affecting  a  fibre.  Besides  this,  the  timber 
is  sawed  in  such  a  manner  as  to  neutralize,  in  some  degree, 
its  tendency  to  warp,  or,  rather,  so  as  to  make  it  warp  the 
right  way.  The  reader  would  be  surprised  to  hear  the  great- 
makers  converse  on  this  subject  of  the  warping  of  timber. 
They  have  studied  the  laws  which  govern  warping ;  they 
know  why  wood  warps,  how  each  variety  warps,  how  long  a 
time  each  kind  continues  to  warp,  and  how  to  fit  one  warp 
against  another,  so  as  to  neutralize  both.  If  two  or  more 
pieces  of  wood  are  to  be  glued  together,  it  is  never  done  at 
random ;  but  they  are  so  adjusted  that  one  will  tend  to  warp 
one  way,  and  another  another.  Even  the  thin  veneers  upon 
the  case  act  as  a  restraining  force  upon  the  baser  wood  which 
they  cover,  and  in  some  parts  of  the  instrument  the  veneer 
is  double  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  both  in  order.  An 
astonishing  amount  of  thought  and  experiment  has  been 
expended  upon  this  matter  of  warping,  —  so  much,  that  now 
not  a  piece  of  wood  is  employed  in  a  piano,  the  grain  of 
which  does  not  run  in  the  precise  direction  which  experience 
has  shown  to  be  the  best. 


THE   PIANO  AMONG  US. 


343 


The  forests  of  the  whole  earth  have  been  searched  for 
woods  adapted  to  the  different  parts  of  the  instrument.  Dr. 
Eimbault,  in  his  learned  "History  of  the  Piano-forte,"  gives 
a  catalogue  of  the  various  woods,  metals,  skins,  and  fabrics 
used  in  the  construction  of  a  piano,  which  forcibly  illustrates 
the  delicacy  of  the  modern  instrument  and  the  infinite  care 
taken'inits  manufacture.  We  copy  the  list,  though  some  of 
the  materials  differ  from  those  used  by  American  manufac- 
turers. 


Woods 

Oak 
Deal 
Fir 
Pine        . 

Mahogany 


fieech 


Beef-wood 


Birch 

Cedar 
-Lime-tree 
Pear-tree . 
Sycamore 

Ebony      . 


MATERIALS. 


From 

Riga 

Norway  . 
Switzerland 
America  . 

Honduras  • 


England 


Brazils 


Canada    . 
S.  America 
England  . 


.  Ceylon    . 

Spanish  Mahogany  Cuba 

Rosewood          .  Rio  Janeiro 

Satinwood         .  East  Indies 

White  Holly      .  England 

Zebra-wood       .  Brazils   . 
Other  fancv  woods         • 


WHERE  USED. 

Framing,  various  parts. 

Wood-bracing,  etc. 

Sounding-board. 

Parts  of  framing,  key-bed    or 

bottom. 
Solid  wood  of  top,  and  various 

parts  of  the  framing  and  the 

action. 

Wrest-plank,  bridge  or  sound- 
board, centre  of  legs. 
Tongues  in  the  beam,  forming 

the    divisions     between    the 

hammers. 

Belly-rail,  a  part  of  the  framing. 
Round  shanks  of  hammers. 
Keys. 

Heads  of  dampers. 
Hoppers  or  levers,  veneers  on 

wrest-plank. 
Black  keys. 


For  decoration. 


22 


344 


TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE. 


WOOLLEN  FABRICS. 

Baize ;  green,  blue,  and  brown.  Upper  surface  of  key-frame, 

cushions  for  hammers  to  fall 
on,  to  damp  dead  part  of 
strings,  etc. 

Cloth,  various  qualities  •  •  .  For  various  parts  of  the  action 

and  in  other  places,  to  pre- 
vent jarring ;  also  for  damp- 
V*^  era. 

Felt    -..x*vv'-  .^;o^'':  ••''.. ;':*  "      V  •••     External  covering  for  hammers. 


LEATHER. 

Under-covering  of  hammers-bass. 

"  "  tenor  and  treble. 


Various  parts  of  action. 


Kings  for  pedal  wires. 


METAL. 


Buffalo 

Saddle 

Basil 

Calf 

Doeskin 

Seal 

Sheepskin 

Morocco 

Sole    .:# 

Iron  ~) 

Steel  I  Metallic  bracing,  and  in  various  small  screws,  springs, 

Brass  f      centres,  pins,  etc.,  etc.,  throughout  the  instrument. 

Gun  Metal  J 

Steel  wire     ;r^        •    ,'f.;«v  .-,  »        Strings. 

Steel  spun  wire     '  .    '  ^  '.-.:.  ,*-#  ..-     Lapped  strings. 

Covered  copper  wire       ,.        .  "       lowest  notes. 

VARIOUS. 

Ivory        .    White  keys. 

Black  lead    To  smooth  the  rubbing  surfaces  of  cloth  or  leather  in 
the  action. 

Glue    (of   a    particular    quality,    made  )  -_     ,       ... 

>  Woodwork  throughout, 
expressly  for  this  trade) 


THE  PIANO   AMONG  US.  345 

Beeswax,    emery  paper,   glass   paper,  ~) 

French  polish,    oil,    putty   powder,   [»  Cleaning  and  finishing, 
spirits  of  wine,  etc.,  etc.  j 

Such  are  the  materials  used.  The  processes  to  which 
they  are  subjected  are  far  more  numerous.  So  numerous 
are  they  and  so  complicated,  that  the  Stein  ways,  who 
employ  six  hundred  men,  and  labor-saving  machinery  which 
does  the  work  of  six  hundred  men  more,  aided  by  three 
steam-engines  of  a  hundred  and  twenty-five,  fifty,  and 
twenty-five  horse-power,  can  only  produce  from  fifty-five  to 
sixty-five  pianos  a  week.  The  reader  has  seen,  doubtless, 
a  piano  with  the  top  taken  off;  but  perhaps  it  has  never 
occurred  to  him  what  a  tremendous  pull  those  fifty  to  sixty 
strings  are  keeping  up,  day  and  night,  from  one  year's  end 
to  another.  The  shortest  and  thinnest  string  of  all  pulls 
two  hundred  and  sixty-two  pounds,  —  about  as  much  as  we 
should  care  to  lift ;  and  the  entire  pull  of  the  strings  of  a 
grand  piano  is  sixty  pounds  less  than  twenty  tons,  —  a  load 
for  twenty  cart-horses.  The  fundamental  difficulty  in  the 
construction  of  a  piano  has  always  been  to  support  this  con- 
tinuous strain.  When  we  look  into  a  piano  we  see  the 
"iron  frame"  so  much  vaunted  in  the  advertisements,  and 
so  splendid  with  bronze  and  gilding ;  but  it  is  not  this  thin 
plate  of  cast-iron  that  resists  the  strain  of  twenty  tons.  If 
the  wires  were  to  pull  upon  the  iron  for  one  second,  it  would 
fly  into  atoms.  The  iron  plate  is  screwed  to  what  is  called 
the  w  bottom  "  of  the  piano,  which  is  a  mass  of  timber  four 
inches  thick,  composed  of  three  layers  of  plank  glued 
together,  and  so  arranged  that  the  pull  of  the  wires  shall  be 
in  a  line  with  the  grain  of  the  wood.  The  iron  plate  itself 
is  subjected  to  a  long  course  of  treatment.  The  rough  cast- 
ing is  brought  from  the  foundry,  placed  under  the  drilling- 
machine,  which  bores  many  scores  of  holes  of  various  sizes 


346  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

with  marvellous  rapidity.  Then  it  is  smoothed  and  finished 
with  the  file ;  next,  it  is  japanned ;  after  which  it  is  baked 
in  an  oven  for  forty-eight  hours.  It  is  then  ready  for  the 
bronzer  and  gilder,  who  covers  the  greater  part  of  the  sur- 
face with  a  light-yellow  bronzing,  and  brightens  it  here  and 
there  with  gilding.  All  this  long  process  is  necessary  in 
order  to  make  the  plate  retain  its  brilliancy  of  color. 

Upon  this  solid  foundation  of  timber  and  iron  the  deli- 
cate instrument  is  built,  and  it  is  enclosed  in  a  case  con- 
structed with  still  greater  care.  To  make  so  large  a  box  — 
and  one  so  thin  as  the  case  of  a  piano,  —  stand  our  summer 
heats  and  our  furnace  heats  (still  more  trying) ,  is  a  work 
of  extreme  difficulty.  The  seasoned  boards  are  covered 
with  a  double  veneer,  designed  to  counteract  all  the  tenden- 
cies to  warp;  and  the  surface  is  most  laboriously  polished. 
It  takes  three  months  to  varnish  and  polish  the  case  of  a 
piano.  In  such  a  factory  as  the  Stein  ways'  or  the  Chicker- 
ings',  there  will  be  always  six  or  seven  hundred  cases  under- 
going this  expensive  process.  When  the  surface  of  the 
wood  has  been  made  as  smooth  as  sand-paper  can  make  it, 
the  first  coat  of  varnish  is  applied,  and  this  requires  eight  days 
to  harden.  Then  all  the  varnish  is  scraped  off,  except  that 
which  has  sunk  into  the  pores  of  the  wood.  The  second  coat 
is  then  put  on;  which,  after  eight  days'  drying,  is  also 
scraped  away,  until  the  surface  of  the  veneer  is  laid  bare 
again.  After  this  four  or  five  coats  of  varnish  are  added, 
at  intervals  of  eight  days,  and,  finally,  the  last  polish  is 
produced  by  the  hand  of  the  workman.  The  object  of  all 
this  is  not  merely  to  produce  a  splendid  and  enduring  gloss, 
but  to  make  the  case  stand  for  a  hundred  years  in  a  room 
which  is  heated  by  a  furnace  to  seventy  degrees  by  day,  and 
in  which  water  will  freeze  at  night.  During  the  war,  when 
good  varnish  cost  as  much  as  the  best  champagne,  the  var- 
nish bills  of  the  leading  makers  were  formidable  indeed. 


THE   PIANO   AMONG  US.  347 

The  labor,  however,  is  the  chief  item  of  expense.  The 
average  wages  of  the  six  hundred  men  employed  by  Messrs. 
Steinway  is  twenty-six  dollars  a  week.  This  force,  aided 
by  one  hundred  and  two  labor-saving  machines,  driven  by 
steam-power  equivalent  to  two  hundred  horses,  produces 
a  piano  in  one  hour.  A  man  with  the  ordinary  tools  can 
make  a  piano  in  about  four  months,  but  it  could  not  possibly 
be  as  good  a  one  as  those  produced  in  the  large  establish- 
ments. Nor,  indeed,  is  such  a  feat  ever  attempted  in  the 
United  States.  The  small  makers,  who  manufacture  from 
one  to  five  instruments  a  week,  generally,  as  already  men- 
tioned, buy  the  different  parts  from  persons  who  make  only 
parts.  It  is  a  business  to  make  the  hammers  of  a  piano  ;  it 
is  another  business  to  make  the  "  action  "  ;  another,  to  make 
the  keys ;  another,  the  legs ;  another,  the  cases ;  another, 
the  pedals.  The  manufacture  of  the  hardware  used  in  a 
piano  is  a  Very  important  branch,  and  it  is  a  separate 
business  to  sell  it.  The  London  Directory  enumerates 
forty-two  different  trades  and  businesses  related  to  the  piano, 
and  we  presume  there  are  not  fewer  in  New  York.  Conse- 
quently, any  man  who  knows  enough  of  a  piano  to  put  one 
together,  and  can  command  capital  enough  to  buy  the  parts 
of  one  instrument,  may  boldly  fling  his  sign  to  the  breeze, 
and  announce  himself  to  an  inattentive  public  as  a  "piano- 
forte maker."  The  only  difficulty  is  to  sell  the  piano  when 
it  is  put  together.  At  present  it  costs  rather  more  money 
to  sell  a  piano  than  it  does  to  make  one. 

When  the  case  is  finished,  all  except  the  final  hand-polish, 
it  is  taken  to  the  sounding-board  room.  The  sounding-board 
—  a  thin,  clear  sheet  of  spruce  under  the  strings  —  is  the 
piano's  soul,  wanting  which,  it  were  a  dead  thing.  Almost 
every  resonant  substance  in  nature  has  been  tried  for  sound- 
ing-boards, but  nothing  has  been  found  equal  to  spruce. 


348  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Countless  experiments  have  been  made  with  a  view  to  ascer- 
tain precisely  the  best  way  of  shaping,  arranging,  and 
fixing  the  sounding-board,  the  best  thickness,  the  best 
number  and  direction  of  the  supporting  ribs ;  and  every 
great  maker  is  happy  in  the  conviction  that  he  is  a  little 
better  in  sounding-boards  than  any  of  his  rivals.  Next,  the 
strings  are  inserted ;  next,  the  action  and  the  keys.  Every 
one  will  pause  to  admire  the  hammers  of  the  piano,  so  light, 
yet  so  capable  of  giving  a  telling  blow,  which  evoke  all  the 
music  of  the  strings,  but  mingle  with  that  music  no  click, 
nor  thud,  nor  thump,  of  their  own.  The  felt  employed 
varies  in  thickness  from  one  sixteenth  of  an  inch  to  an  inch 
and  an  eighth,  and  costs  $5.75  in  gold  per  pound.  Only 
Paris,  it  seems,  can  make  it  good  enough  for  the  purpose. 
Many  of  the  keys  have  a  double  felting,  compressed  from  an 
inch  and  a  half  to  three-quarters  of  an  inch,  and  others  again 
have  an  outer  covering  of  leather  to  keep  the  strings  from 
cutting  the,  felt.  Simple  as  the  finished  hammer  looks,  there 
are  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  thought  and  experiment  in 
it.  It  required  half  a  century  to  exhaust  the  different  kinds 
of  wood,  bone,  and  cork;  and  when,  about  1760,  the  idea 
was  conceived  of  covering  the  hammers  with  something  soft, 
another  century  was  to  elapse  before  all  the  leathers  and 
fabrics  had  been  tried,  and  felt  found  to  be  the  ne  plus  ultra. 
With  regard  to  the  action,  or  the  mechanism  by  which  the 
hammers  are  made  to  strike  the  strings,  we  must  refer  the 
inquisitive  reader  to  the  piano  itself. 

When  all  the  parts  have  been  placed  in  the  case,  the  in- 
strument falls  into  the  hands  of  the  "  regulator,"  who 
inspects,  rectifies,  tunes,  harmonizes,  perfects  the  whole. 
Nothing  then  remains  but  to  convey  it  to  the  store,  give  it 
its  final  polish  and  its  last  tuning. 

The  next  thing  is  to  sell  it.     Six  hundred  and  fifty  dol- 


THE   PIANO   AMONG  US. 

lars  seems  a  high  price  for  a  square  piano,  such  as  we  used 
to  buy  for  three  hundred,  and  the  "  natural  cost "  of  which 
does  not  much  exceed  two  hundred  dollars.  Fifteen  hun- 
dred dollars  for  a  grand  piano  is  also  rather  startling.  But 
how  much  tax,  does  the  reader  suppose,  is  paid  upon  a 
fifteen-hundred-dollar  grand?  It  is  difficult  to  compute  it; 
but  it  does  not  fall  much  below  two  hundred  dollars.  It  is 
computed  that  the  taxes  upon  very  complicated  articles, 
in  which  a  great  variety  of  materials  are  employed,  such  as 
carriages,  pianos,  organs,  and  fine  furniture,  amount  to  about 
one  eighth  of  the  price.  The  piano,  too,  is  an  expensive 
creature  to  keep,  in  these  times  of  high  rents,  and  its  fare 
upon  a  railroad  is  higher  than  that  of  its  owner.  We  saw, 
however,  a  magnificent  piano,  the  other  day,  at  the  establish- 
ment of  Messrs.  Chickering,  in  Broadway,  for  which  passage 
had  been  secured  all  the  way  to  Oregon  for  thirty-five  dol- 
lars, —  only  five  dollars  more  than  it  would  cost  to  transport 
it  to  Chicago.  Happily  for  us,  to  whom  fifteen  hundred 
dollars — nay,  six  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  —  is  an  enormous 
sum  of  money,  a  very  good  second-hand  piano  is  always 
attainable  for  less  than  half  the  original  price. 

For,  reader,  you  must  know  that  the  ostentation  of  the  rich 
is  always  putting  costly  pleasures  within  the  reach  of  the 
refined  not-rich.  A  piano  in  its  time  plays  many  parts,  and 
figures  in  a  variety  of  scenes.  Like  the  more  delicate  and 
sympathetic  kinds  of  human  beings,  it  is  naught  unless  it  is 
valued ;  but,  being  valued,  it  is  a  treasure  beyond  price. 
Cold,  glittering,  and  dumb,  it  stands  among  the  tasteless 
splendors  with  which  the  wealthy  ignorant  cumber  their 
dreary  abodes,  —  a  thing  of  ostentation  merely, — as  unin- 
teresting as  the  women  who  surround  it,  gorgeously  appar- 
elled, but  without  conversation,  conscious  of  defective  parts 
of  speech.  w  There  is  much  music,  excellent  voice,  in  that 


350  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

little  organ,"  but  there  is  no  one  there  who  can  "make  it 
speak."  They  may  "  fret "  the  noble  instrument ;  they  "  can- 
not play  upon  it." 

But  a  fool  and  his  nine-hundred-dollar  piano  are  soon 
parted.  The  red  flag  of  the  auctioneer  announces  its  transfer 
to  a  drawing-room  frequented  by  persons  capable  of  enjoy- 
ing the  refined  pleasures.  Bright  and  joyous  is  the  scene, 
about  half-past  nine  in  the  evening,  when,  by  turns,  the 
ladies  try  over  their  newest  pieces,  or  else  listen  with  intel- 
ligent pleasure  to  the  performance  of  a  master.  Pleasant 
are  the  informal  family  concerts  in  such  a  house,  when  one 
sister  breaks  down  under  the  difficulties  of  Thalberg,  and 
yields  the  piano-stool  to  the  musical  genius  of  the  family, 
who  takes  up  the  note,  and  dashing  gaily  into  the  midst  of 
"Egitto,"  forces  a  path  through  the  wilderness,  takes  the 
Red  Sea  like  a  heroine,  bursts  at  length  into  the  triumphal 
prayer,  and  retires  from  the  instrument  as  calm  as  a  summer 
morning.  On  occasions  of  ceremony,  too,  the  piano  has  a 
part  to  perform,  though  a  humble  one.  Awkward  pauses 
will  occur  in  all  but  the  best-regulated  parties,  and  people 
will  get  together,  in  the  best  houses,  who  quench  and  neu- 
tralize one  another.  It  is  the  piano  that  fills  those  pauses, 
and  gives  a  welcome  respite  to  the  toil  of  forcing  conversa- 
tion. How  could  "society"  go  on  without  the  occasional 
interruption  of  the  piano?  One  hundred  and  sixty  years 
ago,  in  those  days  beloved  and  vaunted  by  Thackeray,  when 
Louis  XIV.  was  king  of  France,  and  Anne  queen  of  England, 
society  danced,  tattled,  and  gambled.  Cards  have  receded 
as  the  piano  has  advanced  in  importance. 

For  such  a  drawing-room  as  this,  after  a  stay  of  some 
years,  the  piano  may  pass  into  a  boarding-school,  and  thence 
into  the  sitting-room  of  a  family  who  have  pinched  for  two 
years  to  buy  it.  w  It  must  have  been,"  says  Henry  Ward 


THE   PIANO  AMONG  US.  351 

Beecher,  w  about  the  year  1820,  in  old  Litchfield,  Connecti- 
cut, upon  waking  one  fine  morning,  that  we  heard  music  in 
the  parlor,  and,  hastening  down,  beheld  an  upright  piano, 
the  first  we  ever  saw  or  heard  of !  Nothing  can  describe  the 
amazement  of  silence  that  filled  us.  It  rose  almost  to  super- 
stitious reverence,  and  all  that  day  was  a  dream  and  marvel." 
It  is  such  pianos  that  are  appreciated.  It  is  in  such  parlors 
that  the  instrument  best  answers  the  end  of  its  creation. 
There  is  many  a  piano  in  the  back  room  of  a  little  store,  or 
in  the  uncarpeted  sitting-room  of  a  farm-house,  that  yields 
a  larger  revenue  of  delight  than  the  splendid  grand  of  a 
splendid  drawing-room.  In  these  humble  abodes  of  refined 
intelligence,  the  piano  is  a  dear  and  honored  member  of 
the  family. 


ANECDOTES  OF  FAKADAY. 


ONE  day,  about  the  year  1812,  a  certain  Mr.  Dance,  a  gen- 
tleman who  employed  much  of  his  leisure  in  scientific  pur- 
suits, went  to  a  bookbinder's  shop  in  London  to  see  about 
having  some  books  bound.  Ribaud  was  the  bookbinder's 
name,  and  Mr.  Dance  was  one  of  his  regular  customers. 
While  they  were  conversing  together,  the  attention  of  Mr. 
Dance  was  drawn  to  an  electrical  machine,  and  other  philo- 
sophical apparatus,  not  usually  found  in  the  establishment 
of  a  bookbinder.  Mr.  Ribaud  remarked,  by  way  of  expla- 
nation, that  this  apparatus  had  all  been  made  by  an  appren- 
tice of  his,  Michael  Faraday  by  name,  the  son  of  a  blacksmith 
in  very  humble  circumstances. 

The  curiosity  of  Mr.  Dance  was  roused.  He  sought  the 
acquaintance  of  this  youth,  and  discovered  at  once  that, 
under  a  rustic  exterior,  he  concealed  an  intelligent  and  gifted 
mind,  with  a  decided  bent  towards  science.  There  was  then, 
and  is  still,  in  London,  an  association  of  men  of  science, 
called  the  Royal  Institution,  which  employed  professors,  and 
maintained  courses  of  scientific  lectures.  Mr.  Dance  was  a 
member  of  this  society,  and  he  invited  young  Faraday  to  go 
with  him  and  hear  the  last  four  lectures  of  a  course  which 
Sir  Humphrey  Davy  was  just  completing.  The  young  man 
gladly  accepted  the  kind  offer.  After  being  conducted  past 
the  doorkeeper  by  Mr.  Dance,  the  apprentice  took  a  modest 
Beat  in  the  gallery,  where  he  attended  closely  to  the  lectures, 


354  TRIUMPHS  or  ENTERPRISE. 

and  took  notes  of  them,  which  notes  he  afterwards  wrote 
out  and  expanded. 

Michael  Faraday  was  thirteen  years  of  age  when  he  was 
bound  apprentice  to  a  London  bookseller  and  bookbinder. 
His  father,  a  blacksmith,  was  reared  far  away  in  the  north  of 
England,  in  Yorkshire.  Why  the  trade  of  bookbinder  was 
the  one  selected  for  him,  is  not  now  known ;  but,  probably, 
he  had  shown  some  inclination  to  learning,  and  his  parents 
supposed  that  the  manufacture  of  books  would  facilitate  his 
getting  a  knowledge  of  their  contents. 

And  so  it  proved.  Among  the  books  which  he  assisted  to 
bind,  were  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  and  Mrs.  Marcet's 
Conversations  on  Chemistry.  His  curiosity  being  excited 
by  these  works,  and  especially  by  that  of  Mrs.  Marcet,  he 
used  to  remain 'in  the  shop  after  working  hours,  and  read 
them.  This  was  the  beginning  of  his  interest  in  science. 

"I  was  a  very  lively,  imaginative  person,"  he  once  wrote, 
"  and  could  believe  in  the  Arabian  Nights  as  easily  as  in  the 
Encyclopaedia.  But  facts  were  important  to  me  and  saved 
me.  I  could  trust  a  fact,  and  always  cross-examined  an 
assertion.  So  when  I  questioned  Mrs.  Marcet's  book  by 
such  little  experiments  as  I  could  find  means  to  perform,  and 
found  it  true  to  the  facts  as  I  could  understand  them,  I  felt 
that  I  had  got  hold  of  an  anchor  in  chemical  knowledge,  and 
clung  fast  to  it." 

He  always  felt  the  deepest  veneration  for  Mrs.  Marcet, 
and  it  was  a  great  delight  to  him  in  after  years  to  form  her 
acquaintance,  and  tell  her  how  much  he  was  indebted  to  her. 
As  long  as  she  lived,  he  used  to  send  her  a  copy  of  all  his 
philosophical  papers  as  they  appeared. 

Hearing  the  lectures  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  had  the  effect 
of  increasing  his  taste  for  the  sciences,  and  especially  for  the 
branches  (chemistry  and  electricity)  in  the  investigation  of 


ANECDOTES  OF  FAKADAY.  355 

which  Davy  had  won  so  much  distinction.  The  book- 
binder's apprentice  was  probably  aware  that  Sir  Humphrey 
himself  was  the  son  of  a  poor  widow,  who  kept  a  milliner's 
shop  in  Cornwall,  and  that  he  had  struggled  up  to  his  pres- 
ent position  through  the  difficulties  which  usually  beset  the 
upward  path  of  genius  and  poverty.  Longing  for  a  similar 
career  with  the  yearning  of  disinterested  love,  and  feeling 
that  he  had  it  in  him  to  accomplish  something  in  science,  he 
took  courage,  in  his  twenty-second  year,  to  write  to  Sir 
Humphrey,  making  known  his  desires  to  him ;  and  with  his 
letter  he  sent  the  notes  he  had  formerly  taken  of  Davy's  four 
lectures.  Sir  Humphrey  answered  promptly.  He  compli- 
mented the  intelligence  of  his  correspondent,  but  strongly 
advised  him  not  to  give  up  the  solid  and  certain  advantages 
of  his  trade  for  a  profession  which  yielded  to  its  most  suc- 
cessful votaries  little  except  barren  glory. 

"  Science,"  wrote  Davy,  "  is  a  harsh  mistress,  and,  in  a 
pecuniary  point  of  view,  but  poorly  rewards  those  who 
devote  themselves  to  her  service." 

Sir  Humphrey  informed  him,  however,  in  conclusion,  that, 
if  upon  further  reflection,  he  still  desired  to  devote  his  life 
to  science,  he  would  bear  his  wishes  in  mind,  and  endeavor 
in  some  way  to  promote  their  gratification.  The  young 
man's  purpose  remained  unshaken,  and  the  philosopher  kept 
his  word. 

There  has  been  preserved  the  very  recommendation  given 
of  Faraday  by  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  to  the  managers  of  the 
Royal  Institution.  As  Sir  Humphrey  was  going  to  the 
Institution,  the  morning  after  he  had  received  Faraday's 
note,  he  met  one  of  its  managers,  named  Pepys. 

"Pepys,"  says  Davy,  "what  am  I  to  do?  Here  is  a  let- 
ter from  a  young  man  named  Faraday  ;  he  has  been  attend- 
ing my  lectures,  and  wants  me  to  get  him  employment  at  the 
Royal  Institution.  What  can  I  do  ?  " 


356  TRIUMPHS    OP   ENTERPRISE. 

"Do?"  replied  Pepys,  "put  him  to  wash  bottles;  if  he 
is  good  for  anything,  he  will  do  it  directly ;  if  he  refuses,  he 
is  good  for  nothing." 

"No,  no,"  replied  Sir  Humphrey,  "  we  must  try  him  with 
something  better  than  that." 

So,  a  few  weeks  after,  when  a  vacancy  occurred  at  the 
Institution  for  a  chemical  assistant,  Sir  Humphrey  penned 
the  following  recommendation  :  — 

"  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  has  the  honor  to  inform  the  managers  that 
he  has  found  a  person  who  is  desirous  to  occupy  the  situation  in  the 
Institution  lately  filled  by  William  Payne.  His  name  is  Michael 
Faraday.  He  is  a  youth  of  twenty-two  years  of  age.  As  far  as 
Sir  H.  Davy  has  been  able  to  observe  or  ascertain,  he  appears  well- 
fitted  for  the  situation.  His  habits  seem  good;  his  disposition 
active  and  cheerful,  and  his  manner  intelligent.  He  is  willing  to 
engage  himself  on  the  same  terms  as  given  to  Mr.  Payne  at  the  tune 
of  quitting  the  Institution." 

This  note  having  been  read  at  a  meeting  of  the  managers, 
the  following  resolution  was  immediately  passed  :  — 

"  Resolved,  That  Michael  Faraday  be  engaged  to  fill  the  situation 
lately  occupied  by  Mr.  Payne,  on  the  same  terms." 

In  this  humble  way  was  introduced  to  a  scientific  career 
the  man  who  is  now  generally  considered  the  greatest  exper- 
imental philosopher  the  world  has  ever  seen.  He  was 
engaged  at  a  stipend  which  tradition  reports  to  have  been 
forty  pounds  a  year  and  his  board.  He  soon  had  the  great 
pleasure  of  accompanying  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  to  the  conti- 
nent upon  that  scientific  tour  which  was  made  famous,  at  the 
time,  by  Napoleon  having  given  these  Englishmen  passports, 
in  the  interests  of  science,  while  waging  war  against  Eng- 
land. They  remained  abroad  for  two  years,  spending  much 


ANECDOTES  OF  FAKADAT.  357 

of  their  time  in  Italy  analyzing  the  colors  and  inks  of  Pom- 
peiian  scrolls. 

Upon  the  return  of  Sir  Humphrey  to  England,  Faraday 
resumed  his  employment  as  chemical  assistant  in  the  Royal 
Institution.  It  was  the  assistant's  duty  to  perform  all  those 
humble  and  laborious  tasks  which  usually  fall  to  the  lot  of 
those  who  prepare  experiments  for  chemical  lectures.  He 
fitted  corks ;  he  repaired  apparatus ;  he  prepared  solutions 
and  gases ;  and  did  all  the  other  dirty  work  of  a  laboratory. 
This,  however,  was  the  farthest  possible  from  being  a  hard- 
ship to  such  a  lover  of  science  as  Michael  Faraday ;  and  when 
these  duties  were  done  he  had  still  more  than  half  his  time 
left  for  studies  and  experiments  of  his  own.  He  improved 
his  time  so  well  that,  when  he  had  filled  this  lowly  post  for  a 
few  years,  he  received  the  appointment  of  professor  of  chem- 
istry, and  from  that  time  forward  he  was  wholly  employed 
in  discovering  and  communicating  scientific  truth. 

Eight  years  after  entering  the  Institution,  he  married,  and 
was  allowed  by  the  managers  to  bring  his  young  wife  into 
his  rooms  at  the  Royal  Institution,  and  there  they  lived  most 
happily  for  forty-six  years. 

As  an  illustration  of  his  character,  the  following  extract 
may  be  given  from  a  diary  which  he  kept  during  a  short  res- 
idence in  Switzerland :  — 

"August  2d,  1841  .—Nail  making  goes  on  here  rather  considerably, 
and  is  a  very  neat  and  pretty  operation  to  observe.  I  love  a  smith's 
shop  and  anything  relating  to  smithery.  My  father  was  a  smith" 

When  Faraday  began  to  be  famous  in  England  as  a  chem- 
ist, he  was  frequently  applied  to  by  men  of  business  to 
analyze  substances,  and  perform  other  operations  in  what  is 
called  commercial  chemistry.  This  kind  of  business  in- 
creased to  such  an  extent,  that  an  immense  fortune  was 


358  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

within  his  reach,  and  he  found  that  he  must  choose  between 
getting  money  and  investigating  science.  Having  no  chil- 
dren, and  being  blessed  with  a  wife  who  sympathized  with  his 
pursuits,  it  was  not  difficult  for  him  to  choose  the  nobler 
part. 

"This  son  of  a  blacksmith,"  says  his  friend  Tyndall,  "and 
apprenticed  to  a  bookbinder,  had  to  decide  between  a  for- 
tune of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds  on  the  one 
side,  and  his  undowered  science  on  the  other.  He  chose  the 
latter,  and  died  a  poor  man.  But  his  was  the  glory  of  hold- 
ing aloft  among  the  nations  the  scientific  name  of  England 
for  a  period  of  thirty  years." 

And  this  glory  he  enjoyed ;  but  far  dearer  to  him  was  the 
love  which  his  success  in  extending  the  area  of  knowledge 
brought  him. 

"Tyndall,"  said  he  once,  taking  his  friend  by  the  hand,  — 
the  hand  that  had  just  written  a  review  of  Faraday's  works, 
—  "  Tyndall,  the  sweetest  reward  of  my  work  is  the  sym- 
pathy and  good- will  which  it  has  caused  to  flow  in  upon  me 
from  all  quarters  of  the  world." 

Of  all  the  sons  of  men,  those  who  benefit  mankiad  most, 
and  get  from  mankind  least  (that  is,  considering  tha  services 
they  render),  are  genuine  men  of  science.  The  salary 
attached  to  this  professorship  of  chemistry,  m*.de  forever 
illustrious  by  Faraday's  having  held  it,  was  eighty  pounds  a 
year,  the  use  of  three  rooms,  with  fuel  and  caadles  enough 
to  warm  and  light  them.  This  was  actually  the  income  of 
Professor  Faraday  during  the  years  when  he  nude  his  great- 
est discoveries.  And  for  such  a  man  it  was  enough.  Small 
as  it  was,  it  gave  him  the  command  of  all  his  time,  and  the 
Institution  provided  him  with  an  ample  apparatus  and  com- 
petent assistants. 

I  only  wish  we  had  in  each  of  our  large  cities,  such  as 


ANECDOTES  OF  FARADAY.  359 

New  York,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  New  Orleans, 
St.  Louis,  Chicago,  and  Cincinnati,  a  scientific  institution 
which  would  give  to  only  one  man  of  science  such  an  oppor- 
tunity as  the  Royal  Institution  of  London  gave  to  Davy  and 
Faraday. 

Later  in  life,  when  the  name  of  Faraday  had  become 
celebrated,  the  government  added  to  his  salary  a^  modest 
pension  of  three  hundred  pounds  a  year.  It  is  said,  by 
those  who  knew  his  affairs  intimately,  that  he  never  received, 
in  any  one  year  of  his  life,  as  much  as  five  hundred  pounds. 
He  had  abundant  opportunities  to  gain  money  by  analyzing 
soils,  coals,  mineral  waters,  and  poisoned  stomachs ;  but 
Faraday,  satisfied  with  his  little  revenues,  preferred  to 
spend  the  whole  of  his  time  in  efforts  to  discover  truth. 

Electricity,  I  need  hardly  say,  was  his  favorite  branch,  in 
which  he  made  the  capital  discovery,  that  the  electricity 
produced  by  friction,  and  that  contained  in  the  magnet,  are 
essentially  tL|  same.  The  substance  of  all  that  he  discov- 
ered and  conjectured,  is  contained  in  four  or  five  volumes 
of  small  size,  but  of  inestimable  value. 

He  re-created  the  science  of  Electricity,  and  many  of  the 
most  important  practical  uses  to  which  that  element  has 
been  applied  were  suggested  by  him.  It  was  he  who  dis- 
covered that  a  single  drop  of  water,  while  decomposing, 
generates  an  amount  of  electricity  equal  to  the  contents  of 
eight  hundred  thousand  large  Leyden  jars.  This  would 
make  a  vivid  and  extensive  flash  of  lightning.  He  says, 
also,  that  the  chemical  action  of  a  single  grain  of  water  on 
four  grains  of  zinc  would  yield  Electricity  equal  in  quantity 
to  that  of  a  powerful  thunder-storm. 

He  was  greatly  beloved  by  those  who  lived  near  enough  to 
him  to  know  him.  He  was  utterly  free  from  that  corroding 
vice  of  England,  that  spiritual  imbecility,  which  Thackeray 

23 


#60  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

named  Snobbery,  —  giving  a  foolish,  trivial  name  to  a  thing 
far  from  trivial.  He  always  spoke  of  his  father,  the  black- 
smith, as  simply  and  naturally  as  a  good  democratic  Ameri- 
can would,  if  he  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  have  an  honest 
blacksmith  for  a  father.  When  he  was  lecturing  one  even- 
ing upon  something  which  he  had  discovered  respecting 
illuminating  gas,  he  concluded  as  follows:  — 

"  Thus  much  for  my  part.  I  believe  I  devised  the  scheme  ;  but 
I  should  never  have  carried  it  into  practice  but  for  the  casualty 
that  I  had,  and  have,  a  brother  who  is  a  gas-fitter." 

Professor  Scoffern  relates  an  incident  which  occurred, 
when  Faraday  was  at  the  height  of  his  celebrity,  that  shows 
the  simplicity  of  his  character :  — 

"  While  I  was  working  in  the  Laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion, Faraday  came  down  and  gossipped  about  things  in  general. 
The  preparations  for  a  chemical  lecture  involve  many  details  of 
work  not  pleasant,  and  for  the  most  part  dirty.  There  are  corks* 
to  be  bored  and  adapted,  joints  of  apparatus  to  be  made  good, 
stains  to  be  removed,  slops  to  be  disposed  of.  That  duty,  aided 
by  the  Royal  Institution  assistant,  was  mine.  Instinctively 
Faraday  began  to  help  —  not  choosing  mere  fancy  work,  however, 
but  aiding  right  and  left,  doing  whatever  he  saw  had  to  be  done. 
Handling  a  retort,  I  chanced  to  let  it  fall,  and  then  there  was  a 
slop  of  some  corrosive  liquid.  In  an  instant  Faraday  threw  some 
soda  on  the  floor ;  then  down  on  his  hands  and  knees  he  went, 
slop-cloth  in  hand,  like  an  humble  housemaid.  Laughing,  I  ex- 
pressed my  desire  to  photograph  him  then  and  there  ;  he  demurred 
to  the  pose,  begged  me  to  consult  his  dignity,  and  began  laughing 
with  a  childish  joyousness.  Hilariously  boyish  upon  occasion  he 
could  be,  and  those  who  knew  him  best,  knew  he  was  never  more 
at  home,  that  he  never  seemed  so  pleased,  as  when  making  an  old 
boy  of  himself,  as  he  was  wont  to  say,  lecturing  before  a  juvenile 
audience  at  Christmas." 


ANECDOTES    OF   FAR AD AT.  361 

Professor  Tyndall  relates  a  very  striking  and  amusing 
anecdote  of  Faraday's  revisiting  his  old  bookbinder's  shop 
at  a  time  when  his  fame  as  a  philosopher  was  spread  over  the 
world.  The  incident  occurred  about  the  year  1850,  when 
Professor  Faraday  was  sixty  years  of  age. 

"Faraday  and  myself,"  writes  Professor  Tyndall,  "quitted 
the  Institution  one  evening  together  to  pay  a  visit  in  Baker 
Street.  He  took  my  arm  at  the  door,  and,  pressing  it  to  his 
side  in  his  warm,  genial  way,  said  :  — 

" '  Come,  Tyndall,  I  will  now  show  you  something  that 
will  interest  you/ 

"We  walked  northward,  passed  the  house  of  Mr.  Bab- 
bage,  which  drew  forth  a  reference  to  the  famous  evening 
parties  once  assembled  there.  We  reached  Blauford  Street, 
and  after  a  little  looking  about,  he  paused  before  a  stationer's 
shop,  and  then  went  in.  On  entering  the  shop,  his  usual 
animation  seemed  doubled ;  he  looked  rapidly  at  everything 
it  contained.  To  the  left,  on  entering,  was  a  door,  through 
which  he  looked  down  into  a  little  room,  with  a  window  in 
front  facing  Blandford  Street.  Drawing  me  towards  him,  he 
said  eagerly :  — 

"'Look  there,  Tyndall,  that  was  my  working-place.  I 
bound  books  in  that  little  nook.' 

"  A  respectable-looking  woman  stood  behind  the  counter : 
his  conversation  with  me  was  too  low  to  be  heard  by  her,  and 
he  now  turned  to  the  counter  to  buy  some  cards  as  an  excuse 
for  our  being  there.  He  asked  the  woman  her  name  —  her 
predecessor's  name  —  his  predecessor's  name. 

" '  That  won't  do,'  he  said,  with  good-humored  impatience ; 
'  who  was  his  predecessor  ? ' 

"'Mr.  Ribaud,'  she  replied,  and  immediately  added,  as  if 
suddenly  recollecting  herself,  '  He  sir,  was  the  master  of 
Sir  Charles  Faraday.' 


362  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

" '  Nonsense  ! '  he  responded,  '  there  is  no  such  person.' 

"  Great  was  her  delight  when  I  told  her  the  name  of  her 
visitor ;  but  she  assured  me  that  as  soon  as  she  saw  him  run- 
ning about  the  shop,  she  felt — though  she  did  not  know 
why  —  that  it  must  be  f  Sir  Charles  Faraday.' " 

This  admirable  man,  in  the  ardor  of  his  devotion  to 
science,  wore  out  both  mind  and  body.  There  was  one 
period  of  two  years  during  which  he  was  not  even  permitted 
to  read  scientific  works,  much  less  perform  experiments. 
He  lived  to  be  seventy-six  years  of  age ;  but  his  last  years 
were  passed  in  a  kind  of  lethargy,  caused  by  the  exhaustion 
of  his  brain  from  forty  years  of  laborious  experiment  and 
intense  thought.  We  may  form  some  idea  of  the  extent  of 
his  labors  from  the  fact  that  the  last  experiment  entered  in 
his  book  is  numbered  16,045. 

The  Queen  gave  him  a  suite  of  apartments  at  the  pleasant 
palace  of  Hampton  Court,  near  London,  and  there  he  peace- 
fully dozed  and  dreamed  away  the  evening  of  his  life. 
Nothing  roused  him,  we  are  told,  near  the  end  of  his  days, 
but  a  thunder-storm.  He  would  gaze  in  rapture  upon  the 
scene,  and  watch  the  play  of  the  lightning  with  all  the  eager 
curiosity  of  his  prime.  But  when  the  clouds  broke  up,  and 
the  storm  rolled  away  beyond  his  view,  the  philosopher  sank 
again  into  his  state  of  dreamy  unconsciousness. 


THOMAS  NAST. 


AT  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  Thomas  Nast,  chiefly  self- 
taught,  and  with  only  the  public  for  a  patron,  is  among  the 
best  known  and  most  widely  honored  of  the  artists  of  Amer- 
ica. His  success  illustrates  the  truth  that  America  has  work 
enough  for  her  artists,  and  is  prepared,  munificently,  to 
reward  them,  if  they  will  but  bend  their  minds  to  do  the 
work  which  is  needed. 

In  one  particular,  I  believe,  the  lives  of  artists  are  alike. 
They  all  begin  their  artistic  career  at  a  very  early  age 
indeed,  by  drawing  portraits  of  favorite  domestic  animals, 
and  other  familiar  objects,  on  walls,  doors,  and  primers. 
Some  children,  it  is  true,  have  this  propensity,  who  never 
develop  into  artists ;  but  where  is  the  genuine  artist  who 
did  not  once  enchant  or  disgust  his  parents  by  disfiguring 
his  bedroom  walls,  or  the  blank  leaves  of  his  school-books? 
If  any  such  there  are,  Mr.  Nast  is  not  one  of  them.  He 
began  to  draw  before  he  could  hold  a  pencil,  performing 
wonders  with  chalk  and  charcoal.  It  was  in  a  humble  home 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  that  the  bent  of  his  taste  thus  man- 
ifested itself,  and  it  was  there,  too,  that  he  received  lessons 
in  drawing  for  a  few  months  when  he  was  about  twelve 
years  of  age. 

Never  was  there  a  talent  more  decided  than  his  in  child- 
hood. Being  of  a  very  active,  eager  disposition,  all  the 
energy  of  his  nature  expended  itself  in  drawing.  He 
scarcely  needed  any  instruction  in  the  rudiments  of  his  art ; 


364  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

he  practised  it  so  incessantly,  that  he  seemed  to  have  no 
more  occasion  to  learn  perspective,  in  order  to  draw,  than  a 
child  needs  to  learn  anatomy,  in  order  to  walk.  He  cannot 
remember  the  time  when  the  drawing  of  any  ordinary  object 
was  difficult  to  him. 

When  he  was  about  fourteen  years  of  age,  Mr.  Bryan 
came  home  from  Europe,  bringing  with  him  several  hundred 
paintings,  designed  to  illustrate  the  history  or  progress  of 
the  art,  from  an  early  period  to  the  present  time.  These 
pictures  were  recently  presented  by  Mr.  Bryan  to  the  New 
York  Historical  Society,  and  they  now  form  part  of  its 
extensive  collection ;  but  for  many  years  they  were  exhibited 
by  themselves,  at  a  small  charge  for  admission,  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  city. 

Thomas  Nast  used  frequently  to  visit  this  gallery,  for  the 
purpose  of  copying  some  of  the  pictures ;  and  Mr.  Bryan, 
observing  his  assiduity,  made  his  acquaintance,  and  pre- 
sented him  with  a  season  ticket.  From  that  time,  the  boy 
almost  lived  in  the  gallery.  Mr.  Bryan,  struck  with  his 
ready  talent,  and  pleased  to  encourage  a  steadiness  of 
endeavor  unusual  in  one  so  young,  proposed  to  him  one 
day  to  become  the  doorkeeper  of  the  establishment.  At 
that  time,  the  novelty  of  the  exhibition  having  worn  off, 
there  were  seldom  more  than  half  a  dozen  visitors  in  a  day, 
so  that  the  taking  of  their  money  would  cause  but  a  very 
slight  interruption  to  the  labors  of  the  young  artist.  In- 
deed, whole  days  passed  during  which  not  a  single  individ- 
ual, except  himself,  visited  the  gallery. 

Mr.  Bryan  offered  him  the  entire  receipts  of  the  exhibi- 
tion, unless  those  receipts  amounted  to  more  than  six 
dollars  a  week.  The  boy  gladly  accepted  the  post,  which, 
beside  giving  him  an  excellent  place  in  which  to  pursue  his 
studies,  yielded  an  average  weekly  income  of  about  four 


THOMAS  NAST.  365 

dollars :  enough,  ten  years  ago,  for  a  careful  boy's  mainte- 
nance. This  assistance,  trifling  as  it  may  seeni,  was,  to  this 
ardent  youth,  an  inestimable  boon.  It  was  just  that  timely 
aid  needed  to  bridge  over  the  period  between  boyhood  and 
manhood,  which,  if  it  had  been  wasted,  might  have  diverted 
him  from  his  true  career. 

Two  years  later,  having  now  reached  the  age  of  sixteen, 
he  boldly  applied  to  Mr.  Frank  Leslie  for  employment  as  a 
draughtsman.  Being  remarkably  short  for  his  age,  and  of 
a  boyish  expression  of  countenance,  Mr.  Leslie  looked  at 
him  with  some  astonishment. 

"  What,  my  boy,"  said  he,  "  so  you  think  you  'can  draw 
well  enough  for  my  paper,  do  you  ?  " 

w  I  would  like  to  try,"  said  the  youth. 

"Well,"  rejoined  Mr.  Leslie,  "you  shall.  Go  down  to  the 
Hoboken  ferry-boat,  and  bring  me  a  drawing  of  the  scene 
just  as  the  boat  is  coming  into  the  dock." 

This  was  putting  the  lad  to  a  severe  test.  Mr.  Leslie  has 
since  told  me  that  he  had  no  expectation  of  the  M  little  fel- 
low's "  doing  it,  and  gave  him  the  job  merely  for  the  purpose 
of  bringing  home  to  his  youthful  mind  the  absurdity  of  his 
application.  The  young  artist  repaired  immediately  to  the 
ferry-house,  where  he  at  once  proceeded  to  the  performance 
of  the  difficult  task  assigned  him,  —  a  task  for  which  the 
quiet  copying  of  pictures  in  the  Bryan  gallery  was  a  most 
inadequate  preparation.  He  struck  out  boldly,  however, 
upon  the  paper,  and  produced  a  sketch,  which,  though  far 
from  correct,  abounded  in  those  graphic  and  vigorous  toucheb 
so  needful  in  popular  illustration.  Mr.  Leslie  saw  at  a 
glance  its  merits  and  defects,  and  at  once  made  a  place  for 
him  in  his  establishment,  at  boy's  wages  of  five  dollars  a 
week. 

The  youth  made  such  rapid  improvement,  that  when  the 


366  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

pugilistic  encounter  was  about  to  take  place  in  England 
between  the  vigorous  Sayers  and  the  mighty  Heenan,  he  was 
selected  by  the  New  York  "  Illustrated  News,"  then  in  exis- 
tence, to  go  across  the  Atlantic  and  illustrate  that  stupendous 
occurrence.  He  went.  He  performed  the  duty  well.  After- 
wards, he  made  his  way  to  Italy,  and  sent  home  illustrations 
of  the  celebrated  campaign  in  which  Garibaldi  freed  Naples, 
and  created  the  kingdom  of  Italy.  He  sent  many  pictures 
also  to  the  "Illustrated  London  News,"  which  were  accepted 
and  published.  Returning  home,  after  a  year's  absence,  he 
stepped  on  shore  with  three  half-dollars  in  his  pocket,  but 
with  a  treasure  of  experience  in  his  mind  and  fingers. 

Mr.  Nast  was  instantly  at  work  again,  and  was  soon  in  the 
receipt  of  as  large  a  revenue  as  any  draughtsman  had  ever 
before  enjoyed  in  the  United  States.  He  now  married  Miss 
Sarah  Edwards,  a  lovely  girl,  who,  to  many  other  virtues 
and  accomplishments,  adds  a  practical  good  sense,  which 
singularly  fits  her  to  be  a  helpmeet  to  an  artist. 

It  was  during  the  war  that  Mr.  Nast  won  his  national  rep- 
utation. Fortunate  was  it  for  the  nation,  during  those  critical 
years,  that  such  powerful  engines  of  popular  influence  as 
Harper's  "  Weekly  "  and  Harper's  "  Monthly  "  were  the  vehi- 
cles of  two  such  genial  and  patriotic  souls  as  those  of  George 
W.  Curtis  and  Thomas  Nast.  Every  one  remembers  those 
double-paged  pictures  in  Harper's  "  Weekly,"  instinct  with 
the  best  feeling  of  the  hour,  which  Mr.  Nast  used  to  give 
us  from  week  to  week.  In  some  of  these  pictures  caricatures 
and  burlesque  became  little  less  than  sublime,  and  they 
moved  to  tears  more  than  to  laughter. 

Mr.  Lincoln  placed  a  high  value  upon  this  series  of  truly 
national  works,  and  many  members  of  Congress  and  many 
brave  soldiers  have  testified  to  the  artist,  in  the  strongest 
language,  their  sense  of  the  value  of  his  efforts. 


THOMAS   NAST.  367 

Mr.  Nast  is  still  at  the  beginning  of  his  career.  It  is  as  a 
draughtsman  that  he  has  been  chiefly  distinguished  hitherto, 
although  he  has  executed  several  oil  paintings  which  have 
been  much  admired.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  he  will 
develop  into  a  great  national  painter,  or  confine  himself  to 
the  branches  of  art  in  which  Leech  and  Dore  have  won  so 
much  distinction.  He  has  the  three  essentials  of  a  great 
career,  —  talent,  industry,  and  perfectly  virtuous  habits. 
Although  of  German  origin,  he  has  not  even  the  absurd  vice 
of  smoking. 


DAVID  CROCKETT. 


A  SKETCH  OF  HIS  EVENTFUL  LIFE,  AND  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  ONE  OF  HIS 

EXPLOITS. 

FEW  men  have  reached  Congress  by  a  stranger  road  than 
the  eccentric  individual  named  at  the  head  of  this  article. 
Some  men  have  talked,  others  have  written,  others  have 
fought  themselves  into  Congress ;  but  David  Crockett  shot 
himself  thither.  It  was  his  wonderful  skill  as  a  marksman, 
and  his  daring  as  a  bear-hunter,  which  made  him  so  popular 
hi  his  district,  that  when  he  chose  to  run  for  office  he 
usually  distanced  all  competitors.  He  could  shoot  a  hum- 
ming-bird on  the  wing  with  a  single  ball.  Seated  upon  the 
margin  of  a  river,  he  would  aim  at  a  fish,  and  as  soon  as  the 
crack  of  his  rifle  was  heard,  one  of  the  little  inmates  of  the 
stream  would  be  seen  struggling  on  the  surface.  He  used 
to  speak  of  his  battered  old  rifle  in  words  like  these  :  "  She  'a 
a  mighty  rough  old  piece,  but  I  love  her;  for  she  and  I 
have  seen  hard  times.  She  mighty  seldom  tells  me  a  lie. 
If  I  hold  her  right,  she  always  sends  the  ball  where  I  tell 
her." 

Shooting  was  not  his  only  qualification.  He  had  other  gifts 
and  graces  calculated  to  win  the  favor  of  a  frontier  popula- 
tion ;  although  it  was  his  matchless  skill  with  the  rifle  that 
first  drew  attention  to  him.  He  was  an  abundant  relator  of 
comic  anecdotes,  and  an  utterer  of  those  eccentric  remarks 
which  are  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  form  a  large 
part  of  the  common  stock  of  wit  in  a  country  place.  Forty 
or  fifty  years  ago,  almost  every  newspaper  that  appeared  had 


370  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

a  story  in  it,  in  some  odd  corner,  in  which  the  name  of 
David  Crockett  figured. 

He  was  born  in  East  Tennessee,  in  1786,  the  youngest 
but  one  of  the  six  sons  of  John  Crockett,  who  by  turns  was 
farmer,  miller,  and  tavern-keeper.  This  John  Crockett  was 
the  son  of  an  emigrant  from  the  north  of  Ireland,  who,  after 
fighting  with  noted  courage  through  the  Revolutionary  war, 
settled  in  East  Tennessee.  There  he  and  his  wife  were 
murdered  by  the  Creek  Indians.  One  of  their  sons  was 
wounded,  and  another  was  carried  into  captivity,  and  re- 
mained a  prisoner  with  the  Indians  for  seventeen  years. 
John  Crockett  escaped,  grew  up,  and  in  due  time  became 
the  father  of  the  famous  David.  When  the  boy  was  seven 
years  old,  his  father  met  with  a  misfortune  which  reduced 
him  to  utter  poverty.  A  freshet  swept  away  a  new  mill  in 
which  he  had  invested  the  savings  of  a  lifetime.  It  was 
carried  off  bodily,  leaving  not  a  wreck  behind.  The  unfor- 
tunate proprietor  then  removed  to  another  county,  and 
opened  a  small  tavern  not  far  from  the  present  city  of 
Knoxville. 

It  happened,  one  evening,  when  David  was  twelve  years 
of  age,  that  an  old  Dutchman,  a  drover,  put  up  at  his  father's 
tavern,  having  with  him  a  drove  of  cattle.  To  this  Dutch- 
man John  Crockett  hired  his  son,  as  drover's  boy,  with  the 
understanding  that  he  was  to  help  drive  the  cattle  as  far  as 
Richmond,  and  then  return.  Away  he  went,  and  was  soon 
in  high  favor  with  the  Dutchman,  from  whom  he  learned 
those  Dutch  anecdotes  and  the  Dutch  brogue  which  he  after- 
wards employed  with  so  much  effect.  He  liked  his  master 
very  well,  but  after  travelling  for  some  weeks  with  the  cattle, 
he  became  homesick,  ran  away,  joined  a  wagoner  bound  for 
East  Tennessee,  and  so  reached  home  again. 

The  next  winter  his  father  sent  him  to  school  for  the  first 


DAVID   CROCKETT.  371 

time  in  his  life ;  but  before  he  had  been  at  school  a  week,  he 
had  a  fight  with  one  of  the  scholars,  in  which  he  gained  the 
victory,  and  beat  his  antagonist  so  severely  that  he  dared 
not  show  himself  in  school  again.  So  he  played  truant  for 
several  days  ;  but  discovering. that  his  father  had  found  .him 
out,  he  thought  it  prudent  to  beat  a  retreat,  and  hired  him- 
self to  another  drover  who  was  going  to  Virginia.  Many 
were  his  adventures.  His  employer,  after  ill-treating  him 
in  various  ways,  turned  him  adrift  hundreds  of  miles  from 
home,  with  only  four  dollars.  Then  he  joined  a  wagoner 
once  more,  and  soon  found  himself  at  Baltimore,  where,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  he  saw  a  ship. 

As  he  stood  on  the  dock,  gazing  at  the  ship  with  open 
eyes  and  mouth,  bewildered  at  the  sight,  one  of  the  sailors 
accosted  him  and  asked  him  if  he  would  not  like  to  go  to 
Liverpool.  Forgetting  his  engagement  with  the  wagoner, 
he  joyfully  consented,  and  rushed  off  to  the  wagon  to  get  his 
clothes,  although  ten  minutes  before  he  did  not  know  that  there 
was  such  a  thing  as  a  ship  in  the  world.  The  wagoner  posi- 
tively refused  to  let  him  go.  Watching  his  chance,  however, 
he  bundled  up  his  clothes  and  started  for  the  wharf;  but  it  so 
chanced  that  in  turning  the  corner  of  a  crowded  street,  he 
came  full  upon  his  master,  who  collared  him  and  brought 
him  back. 

Leaving  his  wagoner  soon  after,  he  started,  penniless,  to 
work  his  way  home.  First  he  worked  a  while  as  a  laborer, 
and,  with  the  money  thus  earned,  he  travelled  a  few  miles 
towards  Tennessee.  When  his  money  was  gone,  he  would 
stop  and  work  again  for  the  first  farmer  who  wanted  him. 
Once  he  bound  himself  as  an  apprentice  to  a  hatter,  for  four 
years,  and  worked  for  him  a  few  months,  until  the  hatter 
failed,  and  he  was  homeless  once  more.  At  length,  after  two 
years'  absence,  one  winter  evening  he  entered  his  father's 


372  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

tavern  with  his  bundle,  and  asked  permission  to  sit  down 
and  rest.  No  one  knew  him.  His  father,  a  somewhat  infirm 
old  man,  was  waiting  upon  his,  guests  ;  his  mother  was  cook- 
ing supper ;  and  his  sister  was  also  working  about  the  house. 
He  remained  silent  for  an  hour,  when,  supper  being  ready, 
he  was  asked  to  come  to  the  table,  where,  the  light  falling 
upon  his  face,  his  sister  recognized  him.  The  truant  had  a 
joyful  welcome,  and  he  kept  the  family  up  late  relating  his 
adventures. 

He  now  set  to  work  in  earnest  to  assist  his  old  father,  to 
whom  he  had  not  given  much  help  or  comfort  hitherto.  By 
six  months'  hard  work  he  paid  one  of  his  father's  debts,  which 
had  caused  the  old  man  much  anxiety.  Then  he  worked  six 
months  more  to  cancel  a  note  of  thirty  dollars  which  his 
father  had  given,  and  brought  it  to  his  father  as  a  present. 
Next  he  went  to  work  for  sundry  other  months,  until  he  had 
provided  himself  with  a  supply  of  decent  clothes.  He  was 
now  nearly  twenty  years  of  age,  and  being  much  mortified 
with  his  inability  to  read  or  write,  he  made  a  bargain  with  a 
Quaker  schoolmaster,  agreeing  to  work  two  days  on  the 
Quaker's  farm  for  every  three  that  he  attended  his  school. 
He  picked  up  knowledge  rapidly,  and,  after  six  months  of 
this  arrangement,  he  could  read,  write,  and  cipher  sufficiently 
well  for  the  ordinary  purposes  of  life  on  the  frontier. 

He  now  began  to  be  extremely  susceptible  to  the  charms 
of  the  female  sex.  Marriageable  girls  were  as  scarce  on  the 
frontiers  then  as  they  now  are  in  some  parts  of  California  and 
Oregon.  Accordingly,  a  young  fellow  had  to  be  prompt 
both  at  popping  the  question  and  in  fulfilling  his  engagement. 
The  first  girl  with  whom  he  was  smitten  was  a  young  relative 
of  his  schoolmaster,  but,  while  he  was  courting  her  with  the 
vigor  and  warmth  of  a  backwoodsman,  and  flattering  himself 
that  his  passion  was  returned,  a  wealthy  suitor  came  along, 


DAVID   CROCKETT.  373 

and  snapped  her  up  before  his  eyes.  He  soon  fell  in  love 
again,  at  a  ball,  and,  before  the  evening  was  finished,  he  was 
engaged  to  be  married,  and  a  day  was  appointed  for  him  to 
announce  the  fact  to  the  girl's  parents. 

On  the  appointed  day,  he  started  for  the  young  lady's 
abode,  but  falling  in  on  the  way  with  a  gay  party,  he  spent 
the  whole  night  in  a  frolic ;  and  when,  the  next  morning,  he 
approached  the  house  of  his  lady-love,  he  learned  that  she 
was  to  be  married -that  evening  to  another  man.  His  riding- 
whip  slipped  from  his  hand ;  his  jaw  fell ;  and  he  sat  on  his 
horse  staring  wildly  at  his  informant.  He  recovered  his 
spirits,  however,  went  to  the  wedding,  and  danced  all  night, 
the  merriest  of  the  merry. 

He  was  soon  in  love  again,  over  head  and  ears,  and  in  due 
time  was  happily  married.  He  lived,  at  first,  with  his  wife's 
mother,  working  a  little,  and  hunting  a  great  deal,  for  his 
subsistence.  After  two  years  he  set  up  his  own  cabin  on 
the  Elk  Kiver,  where  he  cultivated  a  few  acres  for  his  bread, 
and  ranged  the  forest  for  his  meat. 

The  Creek  "War,  in  1813,  summoned  the  yeomen  of  Ten- 
nessee to  arms  under  General  Jackson.  No  young  man  of 
them  all  was  prompter  to  take  the  field  than  David  Crockett. 
He  was  in  most  of  the  principal  engagements  under  General 
Jackson,  and  if  ever  he  obtained  leave  of  absence,  he  soon 
tired  of  the  monotony  of  home,  and  was  off  again  for  the 
army.  He  was  the  life  of  the  camp.  His  merriment,  his 
Dutch  anecdotes,  his  bear  stories,  his  wonderful  shooting, 
his  fortitude  and  courage,  made  him  a  universal  favorite. 

The  war  over,  he  removed  his  little  family  one  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  to  the  west,  and  settled  in  the  midst  of  a  wil- 
derness forty  miles  distant  from  the  nearest  settlement. 
There  he  built  his  cabin,  dug  his  well,  cleared  his  cornfield, 
and  lived  the  life  of  a  pioneer  in  its  perfection.  His  skill 


374  TRIUMPHS  or  ENTERPRISE. 

and  courage  in  hunting  the  deer,  the  panther,  and  the  bear, 
were  wonderful  indeed ;  and  I  must  find  room  for  one  of  his 
bear  stories  before  I  close. 

Years  passed  on.  The  country  filled  up  with  settlers. 
The  fame  of  David  Crockett,  as  a  hunter,  story-teller,  and 
general  good  fellow,  spread  far  and  wide,  and  at  last  he 
found  himself  elected  to  the  Legislature.  So  popular  was 
he  in  the  Legislature  that,  in  1824,  he  was  set  up  as  an 
anti-tariff  candidate  for  Congress,  and  was  only  beaten  by 
two  votes,  in  a  district  of  seventeen  counties.  At  the  next 
election,  he  was  returned  by  the  extraordinary  majority  of 
twenty-seven  hundred  votes. 

At  Washington,  he  was  a  conspicuous  personage,  for  his 
fame  preceded  him,  and  he  was,  perhaps,  the  only  genuine 
pioneer  and  backwoodsman  that  ever  sat  in  Congress.  He 
was  a  member  four  years,  and  would,  no  doubt,  have  been 
again  elected,  if  he  had  not  differed  with  his  old  commander, 
President  Jackson,  on  the  removal  of  the  Cherokees.  He 
found,  at  the  next  election,  that  Andrew  Jackson  was  too 
strong  for  him.  He  was  defeated,  and,  soon  after,  joined  in 
the  movement  started  by  General  Houston,  which  was  de- 
signed to  sever  Texas  from  Mexico,  and  annex  it  to  the 
United  States. 

His  exploits  were  as  romantic  as  any  which  have  ever 
been  related.  He  was  caught,  at  length,  in  a  fort  garrisoned 
by  a  hundred  and  forty  Texans,  when  it  was  invested  by  a 
Mexican  army  of  two  thousand.  Never  was  a  place 
more  valiantly  defended.  After  ten  days  of  conflict 
and  starvation,  every  man  of  the  garrison  had  perished, 
except  six,  one  of  whom  was  Colonel  Crockett.  These  six 
heroes  then  surrendered  to  Santa  Anna,  the  dastardly  traitor 
and  coward,  who  commanded  the  Mexican  army.  This 
base  wretch,  so  far  from  being  touched  by  the  heroism  of 


DAVID   CROCKETT.  375 

Colonel  Crockett,  ordered  him  to  be  murdered,  and  the  gal- 
lant pioneer  fell,  pierced  with  a  dozen  swords. 

This  is  the  merest  outline  of  a  life  so  full  of  strange  and 
romantic  adventure,  that  if  it  could  be  truly  and  fully  writ- 
ten, it  would  attract  universal  attention,  and  be  a  permanent 
addition  to  our  literature.  It  is  a  subject  worthy  the  pen  of 
an  Irving  or  a  Cooper. 

Let  me  give  one  incident  of  his  life  as  a  bear-hunter,  as 
related  by  himself  to  his  friends. 

The  scene  of  this  thrilling  adventure  was  the  region  near 
the  Mississippi  river  called  the  "Shakes,"  from  its  having 
been  shaken,  and  tumbled  into  chaos,  by  the  great  earth- 
quake of  1812.  This  region  is  thus  described  by  a  gentle- 
man familiar  with  it  from  having  hunted  over  it,  with 
Crockett  himself:  — 

"  The  Obion  River,  a  navigable  stream  which  empties 
into  the  Mississippi  nearly  opposite  to  New  Madrid,  was 
dammed  up,  and  two  considerable  lakes,  one  nearly  twenty 
miles  long  and  varying  in  its  breadth,  the  other  not  quite  so 
large,  have  been  formed  of  unknown  depth.  The  bed  of  the 
river  has  been  changed ;  and  fissures  or  openings,  made  in 
the  earth  by  the  concussion,  still  remain,  running  parallel 
to  each  other,  of  various  lengths,  from  three  to  thirty  feet 
wide,  and  from  ten  to  forty  feet  deep.  One,  to  visit  these 
"Shakes,"  would  see  striking  marks  of  the  gigantic  power  of 
an  earthquake.  He  would  find  the  largest  forest  trees  split 
from  their  roots  to  their  tops,  and  lying  half  on  each  side 
of  a  fissure.  He  would  find  them  split  in  every  direction, 
and  lying  in  all  shapes.  At  the  time  of  this  earthquake,  no 
persons  were  living  where  those  lakes  have  been  formed. 
Colonel  Crockett  was  among  the  nearest  settlers ;  and  to 
this  day,  there  is  much  of  that  country  entirely  uninhabited, 
and  even  unknown.  Several  severe  hurricanes  have  passed 

24 


376  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

along,  blowing  down  all  the  trees  in  one  direction,  and  an 
undergrowth  has  sprung  up,  making  these  places  almost 
impenetrable  to  man.  This  section  of  country  which  has 
been  visited  by  the  shakes,  forms  the  best  hunting-ground 
in  the  west.  There  are  bears,  wolves,  panthers,  deer,  elk, 
wild  cats,  in  abundance ;  and  this  is  the  only  place  within 
my  knowledge  east  of  the  Mississippi,  where  elk  are  yet  to 
be  found." 

Such  was  the  scene  of  the  unique  bear-hunt  now  to  be 
related.  Imagine  the  mighty  hunter  himself  telling  the 
story  to  a  group  of  backwoodsmen  on  the  stoop  of  a  country 
store. 

w  It  has  been  a  custom  with  me,"  began  Colonel  Crockett 
(so  his  neighbors  always  called  him) ,  "  ever  since  I  moved  to 
this  country,  to  spend  a  part  of  every  winter  in  bear-hunt- 
ing, unless  I  was  engaged  in  public  life.  I  generally  take  a 
tent,  pack  horses,  and  a  friend  'long  with  me,  and  go  down  to 
the  "Shakes,"  where  I  camp  out  and  hunt  till  I  get  tired,  or 
till  I  get  as  much  meat  as  I  want.  I  do  this  because  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  game  there ;  and,  besides,  I  never  see  any- 
body but  the  friend  I  carry,  and  I  like  to  hunt  in  a  wilder- 
ness, where  nobody  can  disturb  me.  I  could  tell  you  a 
thousand  frolics  I  Ve  had  in  these  same  "  Shakes" ;  but  per- 
haps the  following  one  will  amuse  you  :  — 

w  Some  time  in  the  winter  of  1824  or  '25,  a  friend  called  to 
see  me,  to  take  a  bear-hunt.  I  was  in  the  humor ;  so  we  got 
our  pack  horses,  fixed  up  our  tent  and  provisions,  and  set 
out  for  the  "Shakes."  We  arrived  there  safe,  raised  our  tent, 
stored  away  our  provisions,  and  commenced  hunting.  For 
several  days  we  were  quite  successful ;  our  game  we  brought 
to  the  tent,  salted  it,  and  packed  it  away.  We  had  several 
hunts,  and  nothing  occurred  worth  telling,  save  that  we 
killed  our  game. 


DAVID   CROCKETT.  377 

"  But  one  evening,  as  we  were  coming  along,  our  pack 
horses  loaded  with  bear-meat,  and  our  dogs  trotting  lazily  after 
us,  old  Whirlwind  held  up  his  head  and  looked  about ;  then 
rubbed  his  nose  agin  a  bush,  and  opened.  I  knew,  from  the 
way  he  sung  out,  'twas  an  old  he  bear.  The  balance  of.  the 
dogs  buckled  in,  and  off  they  went  right  up  a  hollow.  I 
gave  up  the  horses  to  my  friend,  to  carry  'em  to  the  tent, 
which  was  now  about  half  a  mile  distant,  and  set  out  after 
the  dogs. 

"  The  hollow  up  which  the  bear  had  gone,  made  a  bend, 
and  I  knew  he  would  follow  it ;  so  I  run  across  to  head  him. 
The  sun  was  now  down ;  't  was  growing  dark  mighty  fast, 
and  'twas  cold;  so  I  buttoned  my  jacket  close  round  me, 
and  run  on.  I  had  n't  gone  fur,  before  I  heard  the  dogs  tack, 
and  they  come  a  tearing  right  down  the  hollow.  Presently 
I  heard  the  old  bear  rattling  through  the  cane,  and  the  dogs 
coming  on  like  lightning  after  him,  I  dashed  on ;  I  felt 
like  I  had  wings,  my  dogs  made  such  a  roaring  cry ;  they 
rushed  by  me,  and  as  they  did  I  harked  'em  on ;  they  all 
broke  out,  and  the  woods  echoed  back  and  back  to  their 
voices.  It  seemed  to  me  they  fairly  flew,  for  't  was  n't  long 
before  they  overhauled  him,  and.  I  could  hear  'em  fighting 
not  fur  before  me.  I  run  on,  but  just  before  I  got  there, 
the  old  bear  made  a  break  and  got  loose ;  but  the  dogs  kept 
close  up,  and  every  once  in  a  while  they  stopped  him  and 
had  a  fight.  I  tried  for  my  life  to  git  up,  but  just  before  I  'd 
get  there,  he  'd  break  loose.  I  followed  him  this  way  for  two 
or  three  miles,  through  briers,  cane,  etc.,  and  he  devilled  me 
mightily.  Once  I  thought  I  had  him :  I  got  up  in  about 
fifteen  or  twenty  feet,  't  was  so  dark  I  could  n't  tell  the  bear 
from  a  dog,  and  I  started  to  go  to  him ;  but  I  found  out 
there  was  a  creek  between  us.  How  deep  it  was  I  did  n't 
know ;  but  it  was  dark  and  cold,  and  too  late  to  turn  back ; 


378  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

so  I  held  my  rifle  up  and  walked  right  in.  Before  I  got 
across,  the  old  bear  got  loose  and  shot  for  it,  right  through 
the  cane ;  I  was  mighty  tired,  but  I  scrambled  out  and  fol- 
lowed on.  I  knew  I  was  obliged  to  keep  in  hearing  of  my 
dogs,  or  git  lost. 

"  Well,  I  kept  on,  and  once  in  a  while  I  could  hear  'em 
fighting  and  baying  just  before  me;  then  I'd  run  up,  but 
before  I'd  get  there,  the  old  bear  would  git  loose.  I  some- 
times thought  'bout  giving  up  and  going  back ;  but  while 
I'd  be  thinking,  they'd  begin  to  fight  agin,  and  I'd  run  on. 
I  followed  him  this  way  'bout,  as  near  as  I  could  guess, 
from  four  to  five  miles,  when  the  old  bear  could  n't  stand  it 
any  longer,  and  took  a  tree ;  and  I  tell  you  what,  I  was 
mighty  glad  of  it. 

"I  went  up,  but  at  first  it  was  so  dark  I  could  sec 
nothing ;  however,  after  looking  about,  and  gitting  the  tree 
between  me  and  a  star,  I  could  see  a  very  dark-looking 
place,  and  I  raised  up  old  Betsy,  and  she  lightened.  Down 
came  the  old  bear ;  but  he  was  n't  much  hurt,  for  of  all  the 
fights  you  ever  did  see,  that  beat  all.  I  had  six  dogs,  and 
for  nearly  an  hour  they  kept  rolling  and  tumbling  right  at 
my  feet.  I  could  n't  see  anything  but  one  old  white  dog  1 
had ;  but  every  now  and  then  the  bear  made  'em  sing  out 
right  under  me.  I  had  my  knife  drawn,  to  stick  him  when- 
ever he  should  seize  me ;  but  after  a  while,  bear,  dogs,  anc 
all  rolled  down  a  precipice  just  before  me,  and  I  could  heai 
them  fighting,  like  they  were  in  a  hole.  I  loaded  Betsy 
laid  down,  and  felt  about  in  the  hole  with  her  till  I  got  hei 
agin  the  bear,  and  I  fired ;  but  I  did  n't  kill  him,  for  out  of 
the  hole  he  bounced,  and  he  and  the  dogs  fought  harder 
than  ever.  I  laid  old  Betsy  down,  and  drew  my  knife  ;  but 
the  bear  and  dogs  just  formed  a  lump,  rolling  about ;  and 
presently  down  they  all  went  again  into  the  hole. 


DAVID  CROCKETT.  379 

*  My  dogs  now  began  to  sing  out  mighty  often ;  they  were 
getting  tired,  for  it  had  been  the  hardest  fight  I  ever  saw. 
I  found  out  how  the  bear  was  laying,  and  I  looked  for  old 
Betsy  to  shoot  him  again ;  but  I  had  laid  her  down  some- 
where and  could  n't  find  her.  I  got  hold  of  a  stick  and 
began  to  punch  him ;  he  didn't  seem  to  mind  it  much,  so  I 
thought  I  would  git  down  into  the  crack,  and  kill  him  with 
my  knife. 

"  I  considered  some  time  'bout  this  ;  it  was  ten  or  eleven 
o'clock,  and  a  cold  winter  night.  I  was  something  like 
thirty  miles  from  any  settlement ;  there  was  no  living  soul 
near  me,  except  my  friend,  who  was  in  the  tent,  and  I  did  n't 
know  where  that  was.  I  knew  my  bear  was  in  a  crack 
made  by  the  shakes,  but  how  deep  it  was,  and  whether  I 
could  get  out  if  I  got  in,  were  things  I  could  n't  tell.  I  was 
sitting  down  right  over  the  bear,  thinking ;  and  every  once 
in  a  while  some  of  my  dogs  would  sing  out,  as  if  they 
wanted  help  ;  so  I  got  up  and  let  myself  clown  in  the  crack 
behind  the  bear.  Where  I  landed  was  about  as  deep  as  I 
am  high ;  I  felt  mighty  ticklish,  and  I  wished  I  was  out ;  I 
could  n't  see  a  thing  in  the  world,  but  I  determined  to  go 
through  with  it.  I  drew  my  knife  and  kept  feeling  about 
with  my  hands  and  feet  till  I  touched  the  bear ;  this  I  did 
very  gently,  then  got  upon  my  hands  and  knees,  and  inched 
my  left  hand  up  his  body,  with  a  knife  in  my  right,  till  I 
got  pretty  fur  up,  and  I  plunged  it  into  him  ;  he  sunk  down 
and  for  a  moment  there  was  a  great  struggle ;  but  by  the 
time  I  scrambled  out,  everything  was  getting  quiet,  and  my 
dogs,  one  at  a  time,  came  out  after  me  and  laid  down  at  my 
feet.  I  knew  everything  was  safe. 

"  It  began  now  to  cloud  up :  't  was  mighty  dark,  and  as 
I  didn't  know  the  direction  of  my  tent,  I  determined  to  stay 
all  night.  I  took  out  my  flint  and  steel  and  raised  a  little 


380  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE, 

fire ;  but  the  wood  was  so  cold  and  wet  it  would  n't  burn 
much.  I  had  sweated  so  much  after  the  bear,  that  I  began 
to  get  very  thirsty,  and  felt  like  I  would  die,  if  I  didn't  git 
some  water :  so,  taking  a  light  along,  I  went  to  look  for  the 
creek  I  had  waded,  and  as  good  luck  would  have  it,  I  found 
the  creek,  and  got  back  to  my  bear.  But  from  having  been 
in  a  sweat  all  night,  I  was  now  very  chilly;  it  was  the 
middle  of  winter,  and  the  ground  was  hard  frozen  for  sev- 
eral inches,  but  this  I  had  not  noticed  before  ;  I  again  set  to 
work  to  build  me  a  fire,  but  all  I  could  do  could  n't  make  it 
burn.  The  excitement  under  which  I  had  been  laboring 
had  all  died  away,  and  I  was  so  cold  I  felt  very  much  like 
dying ;  but  a  notion  struck  me  to  git  my  bear  up  out  of  the 
crack ;  so  down  into  it  I  went,  and  worked  until  I  got  into 
a  sweat  again  ;  and  just  as  I  would  git  him  up  so  high,  that 
if  I  could  turn  him  over  once  more  he'd  be  out,  he'd  roll 
back.  I  kept  working,  and  resting,  and  while  I  was  at  it,  it 
began  to  hail  mighty  fine ;  but  I  kept  on,  and  in  about  three 
hours  I  got  him  out. 

"  I  then  came  up  almost  exhausted ;  my  fire  had  gone  out 
and  I  laid  down,  and  soon  fell  asleep ;  but  't  was  n't  long 
before  I  waked  almost  frozen.  The  wind  sounded  mighty 
cold  as  it  passed  along,  and  I  called  my  dogs,  and  made  'em 
lie  upon  me  to  keep  me  warm;  but  it  wouldn't  do.  I 
thought  I  ought  to  make  some  exertion  to  save  my  life,  and 
I  got  up,  but  I  don't  know  why  or  wherefore,  and  began  to 
grope  about  in  the  dark ;  the  first  thing  I  hit  again  was  a 
tree :  it  felt  mighty  slick  and  icy  as  I  hugged  it,  and  a 
notion  struck  me  to  climb  it ;  so  up  I  started,  and  I  climbed 
that  tree  for  thirty  feet  before  I  came  to  any  limb,  and  then 
slipped  down.  It  was  awful  warm  work.  How  often  I 
climbed  it,  I  never  knew ;  but  I  was  going  up  and  slipping 
down  for  three  or  four  hours,  and  when  day  first  began  to 


DAVID   CROCKETT.  381 

break,  I  was  going  up  that  tree.  As  soon  as  it  was  cleverly 
light,  I  saw  before  me  a  slim  sweet  gum,  so  slick,  that  it 
looked  like  every  varmunt  in  the  woods  had  been  sliding 
down  it  for  a  month.  I  started  off  and  found  my  tent, 
where  sat  my  companion,  who  had  given  me  up  for  lost.  I 
had  been  distant  about  five  miles ;  and,  after  resting,  I 
brought  my  friend  to  see  the  bear.  I  had  run  more  perils 
than  those  described ;  had  been  all  night  on  the  brink  of  a 
dreadful  chasm,  where  a  slip  of  a  few  feet  would  have 
brought  about  instant  death.  It  almost  made  my  head  giddy 
to  look  at  the  dangers  I  had  escaped.  My  friend  swore  he 
would  not  have  gone  in  the  crack  that  night  with  a  wounded 
bear,  for  every  one  in  the  woods.  We  had  as  much  meat 
as  we  could  carry ;  so  we  loaded  our  horses,  and  set  out  for 
home." 

This,  I  think,  is  the  most  remarkable  narrative  of  the 
kind  ever  put  upon  paper.  It  has  haunted  me  for  years ; 
and  I  copy  it  now  for  the  reader's  entertainment  from 
the  little  volume,  published  nearly  forty  years  ago,  in 
which  I  read  it. 


OIL  PAINTINGS  BY  MACHINEEY. 


THE  impatience  of  a  German  washerwoman  led  to  the 
invention  of  lithography.  The  history  of  that  elegant  art 
begins  with  a  homely  domestic  scene,  which  occurred  at 
Munich,  about  the  year  1793,  and  in  which  three  characters 
figured,  —  Madame  Senefelder,  the  poor  widow  of  an  excel- 
lent actor,  then  recently  deceased ;  her  son,  Alois  Senefel- 
der, aged  twenty-two,  a  young  man  of  an  inventive  turn ; 
and  the  impatient  washerwoman  just  mentioned.  The 
washerwoman  had  called  at  the  home,  of  this  widow  for 
the  weekly  wash ;  but  the  list  was  not  ready,  and  the 
widow  asked  her  son  to  take  it.  He  looked  about  the  room 
for  a  piece  of  paper  upon  which  to  write  it,  without  being 
able  to  find  the  least  fragment,  and  he  noticed  also  that  his 
ink  was  dry.  "Washerwomen  are  not  apt  to  be  overawed  by 
such  customers,  and  this  one  certainly  did  not  conceal  her 
impatience  while  the  fruitless  search  was  proceeding.  The 
young  man  had  in  the  apartment  a  smooth,  soft,  cream-col- 
ored stone,  such  as  lithographers  now  use.  He  had  also  a 
mass  of  paste  made  of  lampblack,  wax,  soap,  and  water.  In 
the  hurry  of  the  moment,  he  dashed  upon  the  soft,  smooth 
stone,  the  short  list  of  garments,  using  for  the  purpose  this 
awkward  lump  of  oily  paste.  The  washerwoman  went  off 
with  her  small  bundle  of  clothes,  peace  was  restored  to  the 
family,  and  the  writing  on  the  stone  remained. 

To  understand  how  so  trifling  a  circumstance  caused  the 
invention  of  lithography,  it  is  necessary  to  know  why  this 


384  TEIUMPHS    OF  ENTERPRISE. 

young  man  had  in  his  house  that  flat,  smooth  stone  and  that 
soapy  black  lump,  and  how  it  happened  that  his  ink  was  dry, 
and  that  not  the  smallest  piece  of  paper  could  be  found  in 
the  room.  If  it  is  humiliating  to  the  pride  of  man  to  learn 
what  a  great  part  Accident  plays  in  discoveries,  we  are 
somewhat  reassured  when  we  perceive  that  it  is  only  a 
specially  trained,  active,  penetrating  human  intelligence 
which  can  interpret  and  follow  up  the  hint  which  Accident 
gives.  Our  washerwoman,  reader,  might  drive  us  raving 
mad  with  her  impatience,  but  I  fear  we  should  never  invent 
anything  remarkable  in  consequence.  But  this  Alois  Sene- 
fender  was  prepared  for  his  washerwoman  by  previous  experi- 
ment and  brooding  thought. 

He  had  been  a  law  student  to  please  his  father ;  but  upon 
his  father's  death,  the  poverty  of  the  family  compelled  him 
to  abandon  a  distasteful  pursuit,  and  he  hastened  to  try  the 
stage.  The  coldness  of  the  audience  announced  to  him  that 
he  had  not  inherited  his  father's  talent,  and  the  manager  could 
only  offer  him  the  position  of  supernumerary,  which  he 
accepted.  While  performing  silent  parts,  he  devised 
speeches  and  situations  for  more  gifted  actors.  Some  of  his 
plays  were  performed,  and  with  such  success  that  he  deemed 
it  worth  while  to  print  them ;  and  this  led  to  his  becoming 
intimately  conversant  with  the  whole  art  and  mystery  of 
printing.  Having  plenty  of  leisure,  and  a  plentiful  lack  of 
everything  else,  it  occurred  to  him  to  try  and  save  expense, 
by  printing  his  own  plays ;  and,  with  that  end  in  view,  he 
proceeded  to  experiment  with  sealing-wax,  wood,  and  other 
substances.  Not  succeeding  in  getting  a  good  impression 
from  wax  or  wood,  he  attempted  to  engrave  a  copperplate, 
by  the  aid  of  aqua-fortis.  But  before  applying  this  biting 
liquid,  he  had  to  cover  his  copperplate  with  the  varnish  that 
engravers  use  for  the  purpose,  and  write  upon  it  a  page  of 


OIL  PAINTINGS   BY  MACHINERY.  385 

print  backwards.  It  is  not  easy  to  write  printing  letters  back- 
wards ;  he  made  many  mistakes ;  and  one  mistake  might  spoil 
a  most  laboriously  written  page.  To  lessen  this  difficulty, 
he  contrived  the  mixture  of  wax,  soap,  lampblack,  and  water 
referred  to  above,  with  which  he  used  to  cover  over  his 
errors,  and  write  upon  it  the  correct  word.  This  accounts 
for  his  having  in  his  house  so  unusual  a  mixture,  which  was, 
in  fact,  an  oily  pencil,  —  one  of  the  essentials  of  the  art,  then 
unknown,  of  taking  impressions  from  a  writing  or  drawing 
upon  stone. 

He  succeeded,  at  length,  in  getting  a  tolerable  proof  of 
one  page  from  his  copperplate.  But  plates  of  polished  cop- 
per are  expensive,  and  the  poor  German  playwright  could 
not  continue  his  experiments  with  them.  In  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Munich  the  slabs  of  soft  stone,  since  used  by  litho- 
graphers, are  found ;  and  it  now  occurred  to  the  experimen- 
ter to  try  and  engrave  his  works  upon  them.  It  is  a  lime 
stone,  which,  though  soft  when  taken  from  the  quarry,  har- 
dens after  exposure  to  the  air.  He  cut  some  letters  upon 
the  surface  of  one  of  the  slabs  which  he  had  brought  with 
his  own  hands  from  the  banks  of  the  Inn ;  but  the  result 
was  not  encouraging,  and  he  only  waited  for  his  purse  to  be 
replenished  to  continue  his  experiments  upon  copper. 
Meanwhile  he  used  to  cover  his  flat  stone  with  engraver's 
varnish,  and  upon  the  surface  thus  prepared  practise  writing 
backwards.  On  the  morning  of  the  washerwoman's  visit 
he  had  in  his  room  a  stone  which  he  had  been  roughening  a 
little  to  receive  the  varnish,  and  it  lay  before  him  fresh 
and  clean.  Every  scrap  of  paper  in  the  house  he  had  used 
in  taking  proofs  from  his  copperplate  and  engraved  stones  ; 
and  the  ink  of  this  dramatic  author  was  dry,  because,  in  his 
eagerness  to  print,  he  had  ceased  to  write.  Hence  it  was 
that,  to  get  rid  of  an  impatient  washerwoman,  he  wrote  the 


386  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

list  of  clothes  upon  a  surface  of  limestone  with  a  soapy, 
waxy  pencil.  The  wax  was  of  no  importance.  The  secret 
of  what  followed  was,  that  he  had  written  upon  limestone 
with  a  pencil  of  which  grease  was  an  ingredient. 

In  fact,  the  whole  art  of  lithography  and  chromo-litho- 
graphy  depends  upon  two  facts  of  chemistry,  —  that  water 
and  oil  will  not  mix,  and  that  oil  and  lime  will. 

Before  rubbing  out  his  hasty  scrawl,  it  occurred  to  him 
to  try  whether  the  letters  would  resist  aqua-fortis  ;  a  weak 
dilution  of  which  he  poured  over  the  stone,  and  let  it  remain 
wet  for  five  minutes.  He  found,  or  fancied,  that  the  aqua- 
fortis had  eaten  away  the  stone  to  the  depth  of  one  line, 
leaving  the  letters  in  slight  relief.  His  next  thought  was  to 
see  if  it  were  possible  to  take  an  impression  of  his  list  upon 
paper.  After  many  experiments  and  failures,  he  succeeded 
in  contriving  a  method  by  which  he  could  cover  his  letters 
with  ink,  and  keep  the  rest  of  the  surface  clean.  He  found 
it  was  only  necessary  to  wet  the  whole  surface  of  the  stone 
before  applying  his  inking  pad.  The  film  of  water  kept  the 
oily  printer's  ink  from  adhering  to  the  stone,  but  did  not 
keep  it  from  adhering  to  the  letters  written  upon  the  stone 
with  soap  and  lampblack.  He  laid  his  paper  upon  the  stone, 
applied  the  requisite  pressure,  and  lo  !  an  excellent  proof  of 
his  washing  list !  Lithography  was  invented.  The  process 
was  complete.  It  only  remained  to  devise  apparatus  for 
executing  it  with  facility  and  despatch. 

The  great  secrets  of  the  art  are  these:  1.  A  limestone 
surface ;  2.  An  oily  pencil  in  drawing  upon  the  surface  ;  3. 
Wetting  the  stone  before  putting  on  the  oily  printing-ink. 

Every  one  familiar  with  the  history  of  inventions  can 
guess  perfectly  well  what  next  befell  this  inventor  without 
being  told.  It  is  ever  the  same  old  story.  After  reducing 
himself  very  near  the  verge  of  starvation  by  continuing  his 


OIL   PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  387 

experiments,  and  being  at  his  wit's  end,  a  man  who  had  been 
drawn  as  a  conscript  in  a  neighboring  province  offered  him 
fifty  dollars  if  he  would  serve  in  his  stead.  Senefelder 
accepted  the  offer,  but,  upon  presenting  himself  at  the  sta- 
tion, he  was  rejected  as  a  foreigner,  and  compelled  to 
return  to  Munich.  Then  he  revealed  his  secret  to  the  Court 
musician,  and  represented  to  him  how  well  adapted  the  new 
process  was  to  the  printing  of  music,  which  was  then  only 
printed  upon  copperplates  at  great  cost.  The  Court  musician 
was  convinced.  He  joined  the  inventor  in  setting  up  at 
Munich  the  first  lithographic  establishment  that  ever  existed 
in  the  world ;  where,  amid  poverty  and  discouragement, 
Senefelder  toiled  on,  inventing  presses,  utensils,  processes, 
and  methods,  patiently  developing  the  art  which  he  had 
created.  Of  course,  the  engravers  and  draughtsmen  of  that 
day  either  pooh-poohed  lithography  as  something  contemp- 
tible and  transitory,  or  denounced  it  as  inimical  to  the  inter- 
ests of  art ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  some  of  the  art  critics 
of  the  time  smiled  derision  upon  the  inventor's  exertions, 
and  maintained  that  the  slightest  sketch  from  an  artist's 
hand  was  more  to  be  desired  than  the  best  lithograph  which 
mechanism  could  assist  in  producing.  It  is  mentioned,  as 
an  evidence  of  the  slight  importance  attached  to  the  new  art, 
that  on  one  occasion  the  Academy  of  Munich  voted  to  Sene- 
felder and  his  partner  the  sum  of  twelve  florins  to  aid  them 
in  their  experiments.  The  inventor,  however,  as  inventors 
frequently  do,  triumphed  at  length  over  foes  and  friends, 
and,  after  about  twenty  years  of  unrequited  labor,  secured  a 
small  but  sufficient  share  of  the  results  of  his  invention. 

He  lived  to  the  year  1834.  I  am  assured  by  the  most 
eminent  lithographer  of  the  United  States,  that  Senefelder 
created  almost  the  entire  process,  as  now  conducted,  by  which 
plain  lithographs  are  produced,  and  that  he  lived  to  see  that 


388  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

branch  of  the  art  reach  its  ^utmost  development.  Better 
plain  lithographs  were  executed  in  the  inventor's  own  lifetime 
than  it  has  since  been  thought  worth  while  to  attempt.  He 
also  brought  the  art  of  tinting  lithographs  as  far  as  it  has  ever 
gone,  although,  perhaps,  he  did  not  himself  execute  the  best 
specimens.  Finally,  he  more  than  suggested  the  application 
of  the  process  by  which  those  chromo  or  color  lithographs 
are  produced,  which  now  adorn  our  abodes,  and  which  are 
pushing  from  cottage  and  farm-house  and  barber-shop  walls 
the  gorgeous  daubs  of  Napoleon  crossing  the  Alps,  the  por- 
traits of  "Emma,"  the  engravings  of  General  Washington 
ascending  to  heaven  borne  by  angels  in  Continental  uniform, 
the  representations  of  Edwin  Forrest  in  the  part  of  Rolla, 
holding  aloft  in  fearful  peril  the  child  of  a  supernumerary, 
which  used  to  disfigure  them.  It  is  seldom  that  in  a  single 
lifetime  an  invention  is  developed  so  far  as  this,  and  applied 
to  so  many  uses. 

The  part  which  Accident  played  in  the  invention  of  litho- 
graphy is  more  than  usually  remarkable.  Since  the  day 
when  Alois  Senef elder,  wandering  thoughtful  on  the  banks 
of  Iser,  near  Munich,  picked  up  specimens  of  that  peculiar 
limestone,  and  brought  home  a  slab  to  engrave  upon,  the 
earth  has  been  carefully  looked  over,  and  the  geologists 
have  been  closely  questioned,  for  lithographic  stones ;  but 
none  have  been  found  equal  to  those  which  he  there  discov- 
ered, seventy -five  years  since.  That  quality  of  stone  has 
increased  in  price,  until  it  now  sells  in  our  seaports  at  thirty- 
five  cents  a  pound,  which  makes  a  stone  twenty  inches  square 
worth  about  fifty  dollars ;  but  we  can  get  no  supplies  of  it 
except  in  the  region  where  Accident  revealed  its  existence  to 
our  poor  playwright  in  1793.  If  he  had  daubed  his  washing 
list  on  marble  or  slate,  nothing  would  have  come  of  it.  If 
he  could  only  have  found  a  small  fragment  of  a  play-bill  or 


OIL  PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  389 

newspaper  lying  about  in  his  room,  we  might  never  have  had 
lithography.  If  his  ink  had  not  been  dry,  he  would  doubt- 
less have  used  that  in  writing  upon  the  stone,  and  from  such 
an  ink  no  impressions  could  have  been  taken.  If  his  wash- 
erwoman had  been  so  happy  as  to  possess  a  tranquil  mind,  or 
if  she  had  had  no  crying  baby  at  home,  or  had  held  the  Sene- 
felder  family  in  more  respect,  the  poor  lad  might  have  kept 
her  waiting  while  he  ran  in  next  door  and  borrowed  a  piece 
of  paper.  If  he  had  not  mixed  some  soap  in  his  paste,  and 
thus  added  to  it  the  ingredient  of  oil,  which  forms  the  requi- 
site chemical  combination  with  the  limestone,  he  would  have 
experimented  fruitlessly  with  his  washing-list.  If  he  and  his 
mother  had  not  been  very  poor,  and  in  all  respects  circum- 
stanced just  as  they  were  and  where  they  were,  mankind 
might  not,  for  ages  to  come,  and  might  never,  have  attained 
to  lithography,  and  we  should  not  have  been  the  happy  pos- 
sessors of  Mr.  Prang's  chromos.  It  is  startling  to  consider 
how  near  we  all  came  to  losing  Eastman  Johnson's  "  Barefoot 
Boy."  Two  inches  of  waste  paper  the  more,  or  a  small  piece 
of  yellow  soap  the  less,  and  the  public  might  never  have  had 
that  interesting  child. 

Chromo-lithography,  by  which  our  houses  and  school- 
rooms are  now  filled  with  beautiful  pictures,  is  a  combination 
of  Senefelder's  invention  with  an  ancient  method  of  printing 
in  colors  by  using  two  or  more  blocks.  Antiquity,  however, 
only  gave  the  hint,  which  has  been  developed  with  wonder- 
ful rapidity  by  accomplished  artists  and  artisans  in  Germany, 
France,  England,  and  the  United  States,  —  the  German 
Engelmann  being  the  chief  originator  of  methods.  The  first 
patents  relating  to  chromo-lithography  bear  date  1835,  and 
in  these  forty-four  years  the  art  has  made  such  progress, 
that  copies  of  fine  oil  paintings  are  now  daily  produced 
which  contain  all  of  the  original  picture  which  the  public 


390  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

can  see,  and  which  none  but  a  close  observer  can  tell  from 
the  original.  At  Prang's  manufactory  of  chromos  in  Boston 
there  is  a  gallery  in  which  the  proprietor  sometimes  hangs, 
side  by  side,  an  oil  painting  and  the  chromo-lithograph 
taken  from  it,  both  framed  alike.  I  think  that  not  even  the 
artist  who  painted  the  picture  could  always  tell  them  apart, 
and  I  am  sure  that  few  others  could.  It  would  be  a  safe 
thing  to  wager  that  the  critics  who  have  endeavored  to  write 
down  these  beautiful  productions  would  not  be  always  able, 
without  handling  them,  to  decide  which  was  brush  and 
which  was  printing-press. 

The  process  by  which  these  chromo-lithographs  are  pro- 
duced is  simple,  but  it  is  long,  delicate,  and  expensive.  One 
of  the  chromos  most  familiar,  just  now,  to  the  public,  is  that 
of  the  boy  referred  to  above,  in  the  painting  of  which  Mr. 
Eastman  Johnson  endeavored  to  express  upon  canvas  that 
which  Mr.  Whittier  had  already  written  in  verse  :  — 

"  Blessings  on  thee,  little  man, 
Barefoot  boy,  with  cheeks  of  tan ; 
With  thy  turned-up  pantaloons, 
And  thy  merry-whistled  tunes ; 
With  thy  red  lip,  redder  still 
Kissed  by  strawberries  on  the  hill : 
With  the  sunshine  on  thy  face, 
Through  thy  torn  brim's  jaunty  grace. 
From  my  heart  I  give  thee  joy ; 
I  was  once  a  barefoot  boy ! " 

It  is  a  small  picture,  —  about  thirteen  inches  by  ten,  — 
but  to  reproduce  it  in  chromo-lithograph  requires  twenty- 
six  slabs  of  stone,  weighing  not  far  from  two  tons,  and 
worth  fourteen  hundred  dollars.  The  time  occupied  uj 
preparing  these  stones  for  the  press  is  about  three  months ; 


PBAIIG'8    CHROMO    OF    WHITTIER's    BAREFOOTKD    BOY. 


OIL   PAINTINGS   BY  MACHINERY.  391 

and  when  once  the  stones  are  ready,  an  edition  of  a  thousand 
copies  is  printed  in  five  months  more.  And  yet,  although 
the  original  is  worth  a  thousand  dollars,  and  the  process  of 
reproduction  is  so  long  and  costly,  a  copy  is  sold  for  five 
dollars,  —  a  copy,  too,  which,  to  nineteen  twentieths  of  the 
public,  says  as  much,  and  gives  as  much  delight  every  time 
it  is  looked  at,  as  the  original  work  could.  It  may  be  pos- 
sible, in  a  few  words,  to  convey  some  idea  of  the  manner  in 
which  this  particular  boy,  standing  barefoot  upon  a  rock 
in  a  brook,  with  trees,  a  grassy  bank,  and  blue  sky  behind 
him,  is  transferred  from  a  thousand-dollar  canvas  to  whole 
stacks  of  five-dollar  pasteboard. 

As  far  as  possible,  the  chromo-lithographer  produces  his 
copy  by  the  method  which  the  artist  employed  in  painting 
the  original.  One  great  difference  between  painting  and 
printing  is,  that  the  printer  puts  on  all  his  color  at  once, 
while  the  painter  applies  color  in  infinitesimal  quantities. 
One  crush  of  the  printing-press  blackens  the  page  ;  but  a 
landscape  grows  and  brightens  gradually  under  the  artist's 
hand,  as  the  natural  scene  which  he  is  representing  ripens 
and  colors  under  the  softer  touches  of  the  sun,  the  warm 
winds  and  gentle  showers  of  April  and  May.  As  far  as 
possible,  I  say,  the  chromo-lithographer  imitates  these  pro- 
cesses of  art  and  nature  by  applying  color  in  small  quantities 
and  by  many  operations.  He  first  draws  upon  a  stone, 
with  his  pencil  of  soap  and  lampblack,  a  faint  shadow  of 
the  picture,  —  the  outline  of  the  boy,  the  trees,  and  the 
grassy  bank.  In  taking  impressions  from  this  first  stone  an 
ink  is  used  which  differs  from  printers'  ink  only  in  its  color. 
Printers'  ink  is  composed  chiefly  of  boiled  linseed  oil  and 
lampblack;  but  our  chromo-lithographer,  employing  the 
same  basis  of  linseed  oil,  mixes  with  it  whatever  coloring 
matter  he  requires.  In  taking  impressions  from  the  first 

25 


392  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

stone  in  laying,  as  it  were,  the  foundation  of  the  boy,  he 
prefers  a  browned  vermilion.  The  proof  from  this  stone 
shows  us  a  dim  beginning  of  the  boy  in  a  cloud  of  brownish- 
red  and  white,  in  which  can  be  discerned  a  faint  outline  of 
the  trees  that  are  by  and  by  to  wave  over  his  head.  The 
face  has  no  features.  The  only  circumstances  clearly 
revealed  to  the  spectator  are,  that  the  boy  has  his  jacket  off, 
and  that  his  future  trousers  will  be  dark.  Color  is  placed, 
first  of  all,  where  most  color  will  be  finally  wanted. 

The  boy  is  begun.  He  wants  more  vermilion,  and  some 
portions  of  the  trees  and  background  will  bear  more.  On 
the  second  stone,  only  those  portions  of  the  picture  are 
drawn  which  at  this  stage  of  the  picture  require  more  of 
that  color.  Upon  this  second  stone,  after  the  color  is 
applied,  the  first  impression  is  laid,  and  the  second  impres- 
sion is  taken.  In  this  proof,  the  boy  is  manifestly  advanced. 
As  the  deeper  color  upon  his  face  was  not  put  upon  the  spots 
where  his  eyes  are  to  be,  we  begin  to  discern  the  outline  of 
those  organs.  The  boy  is  more  distinct,  and  the  general 
scheme  of  the  picture  is  slightly  more  apparent. 

As  yet,  however,  but  two  colors  appear,  —  brown-vermil- 
ion and  white.  On  the  third  stone  the  drawing  is  made 
of  all  the  parts  of  the  picture  which  require  a  blue  color- 
ing,—  both  those  that  will  finally  appear  blue,  and  those 
which  are  next  to  receive  a  color  that  will  combine  with 
blue.  Nearly  the  whole  of  the  third  stone  is  covered  with 
drawing ;  for  every  part  of  the  picture  requires  some  blue, 
except  those  small  portions  which  are  finally  to  remain 
white.  The  boy  is  now  printed  for  the  third  time,  a  bright 
blue  color  being  spread  upon  the  stone.  The  change  is  sur- 
prising, and  we  begin  now  to  see  what  a  pretty  picture  we 
are  going  to  have  at  last.  The  sky  is  blue  behind  the  boy, 
and  the  water  around  the  rock  upon  which  he  stands  is 


OIL  PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  393 

blue ;  there  is  blue  in  his  eyes  and  in  the  folds  of  his  shirt ; 
but  in  the  darker  parts  of  the  picture  the  brown- vermilion 
holds  its  own,  and  gains  in  depth  and  distinctness  from  the 
intermixture  with  the  lighter  hue. 

Stone  number  four  explains  why  so  much  blue  was  ,used 
upon  number  three.  A  bright  yellow  is  used  in  printing 
from  number  four,  and  this  color,  blending  with  the  blue  of 
the  previous  impression,  plasters  a  yellowy,  disagreeable 
green  on  the  trees  and  grass.  The  fifth  stone,  which  applies 
a  great  quantity  of  brown-vermilion,  corrects  in  s6me  degree 
this  dauby,  bad  effect  of  the  yellow,  deepens  the  shadows, 
and  restores  the  spectator's  confidence  in  the  future  of  the 
boy.  In  some  mysterious  way,  this  liberal  addition  of  ver- 
milion brings  out  many  details  of  the  picture  that  before 
were  scarcely  visible.  The  water  begins  to  look  like  water, 
the  grass  like  grass,  the  sky  like  sky,  and  the  flesh  like  flesh. 
The  sixth  stone  adds  nothing  to  the  picture  but  pure  black ; 
but  it  corrects  and  advances  nearly  every  part  of  it, 
especially  the  trunks  of  the  trees,  the  dark  shade  upon  the 
rocks,  and  portions  of  the  boy's  trousers.  Stone  number 
seven  gives  the  whole  picture,  except  the  figure  of  the  boy, 
a  coat  of  blue ;  which,  however,  only  makes  that  bluer 
which  was  blue  before,  and  leaves  the  other  objects  of  their 
previous  color,  although  brighter  and  clearer.  The  eighth 
stone  merely  puts  "  madder  lake  "  upon  the  boy's  face,  hands 
and  feet,  which  darkens  them  a  little,  and  gives  them  a  red- 
dish tinge.  He  is,  however,  far  from  being  a  pleasing 
object ;  for  his  eyes,  unformed  as  yet,  are  nothing  but  dirty 
blue  spots,  extremely  unbecoming.  The  ninth  stone,  which 
applies  a  color  nearly  black,  adds  a  deeper  shade  to  several 
parts  of  the  picture,  but  scarcely  does  anything  for  the  boy. 
The  tenth  stone  makes  amends  by  putting  upon  his  cheeks, 
hands,  and  feet  a  bright  tinge  of  blended  lake  and  vermilion, 
and  giving  to  his  eyes  a  somewhat  clearer  outline. 


394  TKIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPKISE. 

To  an  inexperienced  person  the  picture  now  appears  to  be 
in  a  very  advanced  stage,  and  many  of  us  would  say,  Put  a 
little  speculation  into  that  boy's  eyes,  and  let  him  go.  Trees, 
rocks,  grass,  water,  and  sky  look  pretty  well, — look  a 
thousand  times  better  than  the  same  objects  in  paintings 
which  auctioneers  praise,  and  that  highly.  But  we  are  only 
at  the  tenth  stone.  That  child  has  to  go  through  the  press 
sixteen  times  more  before  Mr.  Prang  will  consider  him  fit 
to  appear  before  a  fastidious  public. 

Stones  number  eleven,  twelve,  thirteen,  fourteen,  fifteen, 
and  sixteen  all  apply  what  seems  to  the  uninstructed  eye 
mere  black.  The  colors  are,  indeed,  extremely  dark,  al- 
though not  pure  black,  and  the  chief  object  of  these  six 
impressions  is  to  put  into  the  picture  those  lines  and  shad- 
ows which  the  eye  just  mentioned  cannot  understand,  but 
only  enjoys.  It  is  by  such  minute  applications  of  color  that 
a  picture  is  raised  from  the  scale  of  merit  which  escapes 
censure,  to  that  which  affords  delight.  The  last  of  these 
shading  stones  gives  the  boy  his  eyes,  and  from  this  time 
he  looks  like  himself. 

The  seventeenth  stone  lays  upon  the  trees  and  grass  a 
peculiar  shade  of  green  that  corrects  them  perceptibly. 
Number  eighteen  just  touches  the  plump  cheeks,  the  mouth 
and  toes  of  the  boy  with  mingled  lake  and  vermilion,  at 
whicli  he  smiles.  The  last  seven  stones  continue  the  shad- 
ing, deepening,  and  enriching  of  the  picture  by  applying  to 
different  parts  of  it  the  various  mitigations  of  black.  It  is 
then  passed  through  the  press  upon  a  stone  which  is  grained 
in  such  a  way  as  to  impart  to  the  picture  the  roughness  of 
canvas  ;  after  which  it  is  mounted  upon  thick  pasteboard  and 
varnished.  The  resemblance  to  the  original  is  then  such 
that  it  is  doubtful  if  Mr.  Eastman  Johnson  could  pick  out 
his  own  boy  if  he  were  surrounded  with  a  number  of  copies. 


OIL  PAINTINGS   BY  MACHINERY.  395 

It  is  not  every  picture  that  admits  of  such  successful  treat- 
ment as  this,  nor  does  every  chromo-lithographer  bestow 
upon  his  productions  so  much  pains  and  expense.  A  salable 
picture  could  be  made  of  this  boy  in  ten  impressions ;  but, 
as  we  have  seen,  he  receives  twenty-six;  and  the  process 
might  be  prolonged  until  a  small  quarry  of  stones  had  been 
expended  upon  him.  Some  landscapes  have  been  executed 
which  required  fifty-two  stones,  and  such  pictures  advance 
to  completion  by  a  process  extremely  similar  to  that  em- 
ployed by  an  artist.  That  is  to  say,  color  is  applied  to  them 
very  much  in  the  same  order,  in  the  same  minute  quantities, 
and  with  an  approach  to  the  same  intelligent  delicacy  of 
touch.  It  is  an  error  to  regard  these  interesting  works  as 
mechanical.  A  mere  mechanic,  it  is  true,  by  a  certain 
Chinese  servility  of  copying,  can  produce  an  extremely  close, 
hard  imitation  of  an  oil  painting ;  and  much  work  of  this 
kind  is  done  in  Germany  and  England.  But  in  our  Boston 
establishment  no  mechanic  puts  pencil  to  one  of  the  stones 
employed  in  producing  fine  pictures.  The  artistic  work  is 
executed  by  artists  of  repute,  who  have  themselves  produced 
respectable  paintings  of  the  kind  which  they  are  employed  to 
imitate.  Any  one  who  watches  Mr.  Harring  transferring 
to  a  long  series  of  lithographic  stones  Mr.  Hill's  painting  of 
the  Yosemite  Valley  will  perceive  that  he  is  laboring  in  the 
spirit  of  an  artist  and  by  the  methods  of  an  artist.  It  would 
be  highly  absurd  to  claim  for  any  copyist  equal  rank  with 
the  creator  of  the  original,  or  to  say  that  any  copy  can  pos- 
sess the  intrinsic  value  of  an  original.  But  it  is  unjust  to 
reduce  to  the  rank  of  artisans  the  skilful  and  patient  artists 
who  know  how  to  catch  the  spirit  and  preserve  the  details 
of  a  fine  work,  and  reproduce  in  countless  copies  all  of  both 
which  the  public  can  discern. 

This  art  of  chromo-lithography  harmonizes  well  with  the 
I 


396  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

special  work  of  America  at  the  present  moment,  which  is 
not  to  create,  but  to  diffuse ;  not  to  produce  literature,  but 
to  distribute  the  spelling-book ;  not  to  add  to  the  world's 
treasures  of  art,  but  to  educate  the  mass  of  mankind  to  an 
intelligent  enjoyment  of  those  which  we  already  possess.  Our 
poets,  most  of  them,  are  gray-beards,  and  it  does  not  yet 
appear  that  their  places  are  to  be  filled  when  they  are  gone. 
Our  few  literary  men  of  established  rank  are  descending  into 
the  vale  of  years,  and  "their  successors  have  not  emerged 
into  view.  In  the  region  of  thq  fine  arts  there  are  indica- 
tions of  more  vigorous  life ;  but  our  young  artists  do  not 
seem  so  willing  as  the  great  men  of  old  to  submit  to  the 
inexorable  conditions  of  a  lasting  and  a  growing  success,  — 
a  simple,  inexpensive  life,  steady  toil,  Spartan  fare,  and  a 
brain  uncontaminated  by  narcotics.  And  if,  in  the  depart- 
ment of  original  science,  we  can  boast  of  one  great  name,  it 
is  the  name  of  a  person  whom  we  only  had  the  sense  to  appro- 
priate, not  the  honor  to  produce.  Meanwhile,  what  our 
sweet  and  tenderly  beloved  Tory  friends  amiably  style  "  the 
scum  of  Europe  "  pours  upon  our  shores,  chokes  up  our 
cities,  and  overspreads  the  Western  plains.  When  a  Tory 
speaks  of  the  "scum  of  Europe,"  or  of  "the  dregs  of  the 
people,"  he  merely  means  the  people  whom  his  barbaric  and 
all-grasping  meanness  has  kept  ignorant  and  poor.  These 
people,  as  well  as  the  emancipated  slaves  of  the  South,  it 
devolves  upon  us  of  this  generation  and  the  next  to  convert 
into  thinking,  knowing,  skilful,  tasteful  American  citizens. 
Mr.  Prang  has  finished  his  new  manufactory  just  in  time. 
By  his  assistance  we  may  hope  to  diffuse  among  all  classes 
of  the  people  that  feeling  for  art  which  must  precede  the 
production  of  excellent  national  works. 

The  public  have  shown  an  alacrity  to  possess  these  beauti- 
ful pictures.      In  April,  1861,  Louis  Prang  was  proprietor 


OIL   PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  397 

of  a  small  lithographic  establishment  in  the  fourth  story  of  a 
building  in  Boston.  The  impending  war  had  not  merely 
injured  his  business,  but  brought  it  to  an  absolute  stand-still. 
His  presses  were  covered  with  dust ;  he  had  dismissed  his 
workmen ;  no  one  came  near  him ;  and,  being  still  in  debt 
for  his  presses  and  stones,  he  was  not  to  be  reckoned,  just 
then,  among  the  fortunate  of  his  species.  One  day,  at  the 
time  when  all  eyes  were  directed  to  the  pregnant  events 
occurring  in  Charleston  Harbor,  when  Sumter  and  Moultrie 
were  on  every  tongue  and  in  every  heart,  a  friend  chanced 
to  show  the  anxious  lithographer  an  engineer's  plan  of  that 
harbor,  with  the  positions  of  all  the  forts,  shoals,  and  chan- 
nels marked,  with  a  map  of  the  city  in  its  proper  place, 
drawings  of  the  forts  in  the  corners,  and  the  distances  indi- 
cated. w  This  would  be  a  good  thing  for  you  to  publish,'* 
said  his  friend.  It  was  an  oar  thrown  to  a  drowning  man. 
A  few  days  after,  the  occupants  of  the  lofty  building  in 
which  Mr.  Prang  had  his  small  shop  were  at  first  surprised, 
and  then  annoyed,  by  the  thunder  of  newsboys  and  errand- 
boys  tramping  up  and  thumping  down  the  stairs  leading  to 
the  lithographer's  room.  Four  presses  were  soon  running. 
The  master  of  the  shop,  with  surprise  and  pleasure  beaming 
from  his  countenance,  of  late  so  dejected,  was  handing  out 
copies  of  the  map  by  ones,  twos,  dozens,  twenties,  and  hun- 
dreds, damp  from  the  stones,  as  fast  as  the  presses  could 
print  them.  On  the  first  day,  before  the  map  had  got  into 
the  shop  windows  and  upon  the  news-stands,  so  large  a 
number  of  single  copies  were  sold,  at  twenty-five  cents  each, 
by  the  publisher  himself,  that  he  had  at  night  a  hatful  of 
silver  coin.  The  flow  of  cash  came  so  suddenly  and  so  unex- 
pectedly, that  he  did  not  know  where  to  put  it,  and  was 
obliged  to  use  his  hat,  for  want  of  a  reservoir  more  conven- 
ient. The  little  map  was  a  marvellous  hit.  It  sold  to  the 


398  TKITJMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

extent  of  forty  thousand  copies  before  the  public  mind  was 
turned  to  other  scenes. 

And  you  may  be  sure  that,  when  the  public  mind  had  gone 
over  the  Long  Bridge  into  Virginia,  Mr.  Prang  was  ready 
with  another  map,  and  that  during  the  four  years  which  fol- 
lowed it  was  not  his  fault  if  the  people  did  not  perfectly 
comprehend  the  various  "seats  of  war."  One  of  his  maps, 
drawn  so  that  each  person  could  mark  for  himself  the  chang- 
ing positions  of  the  two  armies,  was  in  such  demand  that  he 
had  six  presses  running  upon  it,  night  and  day,  for  several 
weeks,  and  sold  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies.  When 
maps  flagged,  he  started  those  card-portraits  of  popular  gen- 
erals, of  which  millions  were  sold,  at  ten  cents  each,  chiefly 
to  the  army.  Then  followed  sheets  of  heads,  —  fifty  heads 
upon  one  large  card,  —  which  had  considerable  success. 

In  this  way  was  accumulated  the  capital  upon  which  Mr. 
Prang's  present  business  of  chromo-lithography  was  founded. 
He  began  with  those  extremely  pretty  cards  which  enliven 
young  ladies'  albums.  He  invited  a  lady  of  Boston,  noted 
for  her  skill  and  taste  in  painting  flowers  and  fruit,  to  paint 
for  him  twelve  wild-flowers  from  nature,  each  on  a  card  of 
the  usual  album  size.  These  he  lithographed  in  colors,  and 
followed  them  with  sets  of  mosses,  butterflies,  birds,  roses, 
autumn  leaves,  fruit,  dogs,  landscapes,  and  many  others. 
All  of  these  were  painted  from  nature,  and  reproduced  with 
great  fidelity.  Some  of  them  are  exceedingly  popular  with 
the  possessors  of  albums,  —  one  set  of  twelve  beautiful  roses 
having  already  reached  a  sale  of  fifty  thousand  sets .  And 
so,  by  successive  steps,  this  able  man  arrived  at  the  produc- 
tion of  full  chromo-lithographs.  His  first  attempts  were 
failures.  A  set  of  four  Cuban  scenes,  the  first  of  the  Prang 
chromos,  which  were  sold  together  in  a  paper  portfolio,  did 
not  strike  the  public  favorably.  There  was  nothing  to  hang 


OIL   PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  399 

up  in  the  parlor.  Mr.  Prang  next  tried  a  pair  of  landscapes, 
which  also  failed  to  lure  five-dollar  bills  from  the  passers-by. 
His  third  attempt  was  Tait's  Group  of  Chickens,  and  this 
was  an  immediate,  great,  and  permanent  success.  This 
encouraged  him  to  persevere,  until  now  his  list  of  full  chro- 
mos  embraces  forty  subjects,  and  he  has  been  able  to  build 
the  first  factory  that  was  ever  erected  for  a  lithographic  bus- 
iness in  any  part  of  the  world.  With  seventy  men  and  forty 
presses,  he  is  only  just  able  to  supply  the  demand.  It  would 
now  be  hard  to  find  a  house  or  school-room  in  which  there 
is  not  somewhere  a  bit  of  brilliancy  executed  at  this  estab- 
lishment. 

In  order  to  value  aright  the  advantage  it  is  to  the  public 
to  be  able  to  buy  a  truly  beautiful  little  picture,  correct  in 
drawing  and  natural  in  color,  for  the  price  of  a  pair  of  slip- 
pers, it  is  necessary  for  us  to  know  what  pictures  these 
chromos  displace.  It  is  not  true  that  they  lessen  the  demand 
for  excellent  original  works  The  ostentation  of  the  rich,  in 
this  kind  of  luxury,  ministers  to  the  pleasure  of  the  rest  of 
mankind ;  just  as  the  pride  of  a  class  pays  for  the  opera, 
which  the  poor  man  can  enjoy  for  next  to  nothing  in  the  gal- 
lery. The  reason  why  we  laborers  in  New  York  own  a 
fine  park  of  eight  hundred  acres,  is  because  sundry  rich  men 
felt  the  need  of  a  more  convenient  place  for  displaying  their 
equipages  on  fine  afternoons.  We  may  rely  upon  it,  that 
the  persons  who  now  buy  expensive  works  will  continue  so 
to  do,  and  that  these  chromos  will  enhance,  rather  than 
diminish,  the  value  of  originals ;  because  the  possession  of 
an  original  will  confer  more  distinction  when  every  one  has 
copies ;  and  it  is  distinction  which  the  foolish  part  of  our 
race  desires.  Nor  is  it  a  slight  advantage  to  an  artist  to 
have  in  his  works  two  kinds  of  property  instead  of  one  ;  the 
power  to  sell  them,  and  the  power  to  sell  the  privilege  of 


400  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

multiplying  copies  of  them.  Neither  art,  literature,  nor 
science  will  have  fair  play  in  this  world,  until  one  success, 
strictly  first-rate,  will  confer  upon  the  producer  of  the  work 
a  competent  estate ;  or,  in  other  words,  until  every  one  who 
acquires  property  in  a  production  of  art,  literature,  or  science 
will  pay  a  just  compensation  to  the  producer.  Before  many 
years  have  passed,  we  shall  see  artists  mounted  on  horseback 
riding  in  our  Central  Park,  who  would  have  gone  on  foot 
all  their  days,  but  for  the  reproduction  of  their  works  by 
chromo-lithography.  Copyright  will  pay  for  the  oats. 

But  there  is  one  class  of  picture-dealers  and  picture-makers 
whom  this  beautiful  process  of  chromo-lithography  will  seri- 
ously injure.  I  mean  those  who  make  and  sell  the  land- 
scapes which  are  offered  at  the  New  York  ferries  for  five 
dollars  a  pair,  gilt  frames  and  all ;  also  those  who  sell  at 
auction  "  splendid  oil  paintings  collected  in  Italy  by  a  well- 
known  connoisseur  recently  deceased."  Some  of  these  fine 
works,  I  am  informed  by  one  who  has  done  them  (a  German 
artist  whom  poverty  and  ignorance  of  the  English  language 
compelled  for  a  few  months  to  misuse  his  .brush  in  this  way), 
are  executed  a  dozen  at  a  time,  and  are  paid  for  by  the 
dozen.  Twelve  canvases  are  set  up  in  a  large  garret-room. 
The  painter,  with  paint-pot  in  one  hand  and  brush  in  the 
other,  goes  his  rounds  ;  first,  putting  in  all  the  skies  ;  next, 
perhaps,  all  the  grass  ;  then,  his  trees ;  and,  finally,  dots  in 
a  few  cows,  sheep,  children,  and  ladies.  A  good  hand  can 
execute  a  very  superior  dozen  in  a  week,  for  which,  in  these 
dear  times,  he  may  get  as  much  as  twenty  dollars.  Before 
the  war,  the  established  price  for  a  good  article  of  an  oil 
painting  was  twelve  dollars  a  dozen,  and  find  your  own 
paint. 

The  principal  manufactory  in  the  United  States  of  this 
description  of  ware  is  in  a  certain  Broad  and  noisy  street 


OIL   PAINTINGS   BY   MACHINERY.  401 

of  a  city  that  need  not  be  named.  It  is  styled  by  its  propri- 
etor "  The  American  Art  Gallery  for  the  Encouragement  of 
Art  and  Young  Artists  " ;  but  among  the  unhappy  young 
men  who  earn  a  sorry  livelihood  by  plying  the  brush  therein, 
the  establishment  is  called  "  The  Slaughter-House,"  and  its 
master  "The  Butcher."  This  man  of  blood  was  once  an 
auctioneer  in  a  street  that  has  little  in  common  with  the  illus- 
trious orator  and  statesman  whose  name  it  bears,  wherein 
persons  in  needy  circumstances  can  either  sell  superfluous  or 
buy  indispensable  garments.  It  is  now  his  boast  that  he  is 
the  "greatest  patron  of  the  fine  arts  in  America,"  and  his 
ways 'of  patronizing  arts  are  various.  He  will  have  pictures 
painted  by  a  young  artist  whose  necessities  are  urgent,  which 
he  will  keep  as  part  of  his  stock  in  trade.  In  a  room  parti- 
tioned off  from  "  The  American  Art  Gallery  "  just  mentioned 
he  has  a  number  of  "  hands  "  multiplying  copies  of  these  pic- 
tures as  fast  as  the  brush  can  dab  on  the  paint.  These 
"hands,"  to  whom  he  pays  weekly  wages  which  average  less 
than  the  wages  of  laborers,  acquire  by  incessant  practice  a 
dexterity  in  making  the  copies  that  is  truly  remarkable. 
Besides  these,  he  has  out-door  hands,  who,  like  journeymen 
tailors,  take  their  work  home  and  do  it  by  the  piece.  The 
pictures  are  offered  for  sale  in  the  Gallery ;  but  as  they  accu- 
mulate rapidly,  the  proprietor  holds  an  auction  every  few 
weeks,  either  of  the  Old  Masters  or  of  Great  Living  Artists. 
These  auctions  take  place,  by  turns,  in  New  York,  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  Buffalo,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and 
San  Francisco.  The  Californians,  my  German  artist  says, 
are  liberal  patrons  of  the  "  American  Art  Gallery  for  the 
Encouragement  of  Art  and  Young  Artists,"  the  sales  in  San 
Francisco  being  both  frequent  and  profitable.  Even  to  Aus- 
tralia, on  the  other  side  of  the  globe,  consignments  of  these 
precious  works  are  sent  from  the  Gallery  in  the  nameless 


402  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

city.  The  pictures  offered  at  the  auction  sales  are  frequently 
advertised  and  declared  to  be  "  original  oil  paintings,  by 
native  artists,  from  the  American  Gallery  for  the  Encourage- 
ment of  Art  and  young  Artists."  The  frame  is,  of  course, 
an  item  of  the  first  importance  in  this  kind  of  picture.  The 
butcher  manufactures  his  own  frames,  and  he  takes  care  that 
they  shall  be  splendid.  This  is  probably  the  secret  of  his 
success ;  for  what  is  there  dearer  to  the  heart  of  man  and 
woman  than  a  gorgeous  parlor?  This  amiable  passion  burns 
in  the  breast  of  every  true  American,  and  it  is  this  which 
creates  the  demand  for  splendid  gilt  frames  with  something 
in  them  that  looks  a  little  like  a  picture. 

I  will  copy,  for  the  reader's  more  complete  information,  a 
few  sentences  from  a  letter  lying  before  me,  which  describes 
some  of  the  modes  in  which  Art  is  encouraged  at  this  Amer- 
ican Gallery :  — 

"  The  proprietor  never  fails  to  impress  upon  a  young  artist  who 
goes  to  him  to  sell  pictures  or  get  employment  the  advantages  to 
be  derived  from  studying  with  him,  and  his  generosity  in  founding 
a  place  for  their  encouragement  and  assistance,  and  in  furnishing 
them  canvas,  a  nice  studio,  easels,  and  other  things,  and  then  pay- 
ing them  while  they  are  improving  themselves.  They  are  required 
to  furnish  their  own  paints ;  but  as  they  all  use  house  paint,  and 
buy  it  in  pound  pots,  that  does  not  form  a  very  heavy  item  of 
expense.  When  I  first  went  to  him  in  1863  I  preferred  working  by 
the  piece,  and  generally  made  about  fifteen  dollars  a  week.  .  . 
I  received  for  a  picture  twenty-six  inches  by  thirty-six,  four  dol- 
lars ;  for  one  about  twelve  by  sixteen,  one  dollar  and  a  half.  For 
Cole's  Voyages  of  Life,  size  twenty-four  by  thirty  (one  set  was 
sent  with  every  collection),  we  received  two  dollars.  The  next 
time  I  went  to  him  he  would  not  employ  me  except  by  the  week, 
and  gave  me  twelve  dollars,  which  he  said  was  more  than  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  paying.  When  working  by  the  piece,  the  most  money 
was  to  be  made  on  what  he  calls  his  crystal  medallions,  —  small 


OIL  PAINTINGS   BY  MACHINERY.  403 

ovals  pasted  on  the  under  side  of  convex  glasses,  for  which  we 
were  paid  from  seventy-five  cents  to  a  dollar  and  a  quarter,  accord- 
ing to  size.  It  is  a  trick  of  this  old  fellow,  when  a  person  brings 
in  a  picture  for  sale,  to  tell  him  to  leave  it,  and  when  he  has  time 
he  will  look  at  it,  and  pay  whatever  it  is  worth.  If  the  owner  does 
so,  and  the  picture  is  of  any  value,  he  sends  it  immediately  to  the 
paint  room,  and  has  one  or  more  copies  made  of  it.  When  the 
owner  calls  he  will  offer  him  two  or  three  dollars  for  it ;  and  if  he 
is  not  satisfied,  he  can  take  it  away,  for  the  copies  answer  the  pur- 
pose just  as  well  as  the  original." 

These  are  the  pictures  which  chromos  are  displacing. 
Such  are  the  dealers  whom  their  popularity  is  likely  to  drive 
to  more  honest  or  less  hurtful  employments.  When  I  hear 
critics  lamenting  the  prevalence  of  these  truly  beautiful 
products  of  chemistry  and  art,  and  declaring  that  they  cor- 
rupt the  taste  of  the  people,  I  think  of  the  "American  Gallery 
for  the  Encouragement  of  Art  and  Young  Artists." 

It  is  possible  to  overvalue  the  educating  influence  even 
of  excellent  pictures.  In  strengthening  or  informing  the 
intellect,  they  are  of  no  more  use  than  mothers'  kisses  or 
the  smiling  loveliness  of  a  flower-garden  ;  and,  truly,  a  man 
may  spend  his  life  among  pictures,  and  fill  books  with  elo- 
quent discourse  about  them,  and  yet  remain  a  short-sighted 
Buskin,  filled  with  insolent  contempt  of  his  species,  whom 
he  does  his  best  to  mislead.  But  we  can  say  of  good  pic- 
tures, that  they  are  a  source  of  innocent  and  refined  pleasure  ; 
and  that  is  enough  to  justify  their  existence.  I  think,  there- 
fore, that  this  new  art,  which  enables  us  -to  buy  for  five 
dollars  all  that  we  can  enjoy  of  a  thousand-dollar  picture,  is 
one  that  deserves  the  encouragement  it  is  receiving. 


THE  FOUNDER  OF  THE  ROTHSCHILDS. 


THEKE  used  to  be  a  conundrum  current  in  Europe,  which 
was  something  like  this  :  "  What  is  the  difference  between 
ancient  and  modern  times ?  Answer:  In  ancient  times,  all 
the  Jews  had  one  king ;  in  modern  times,  all  the  kings  have 
one  Jew." 

The  Jew  referred  to  in  this  conundrum  was  Maier  Arnsel 
Rothschild,  the  founder  of  the  great  banking-house  so  famous 
throughout  the  world.  The  history  of  this  remarkable  per- 
son, which  I  shall  now  briefly  relate,  is  a  striking  illustration 
of  the  well-known  truth,  that  every  great  and  permanent 
success  in  business  is  founded  up'on  the  rock  of  honesty. 

A  hundred  years  ago,  there  lived  in  the  German  city  of 
Frankfort  a  Jewish  money-changer,  named  Amsel  Moses 
Rothschild,  who  gained  a  moderate  livelihood  by  buying 
and  selling  the  coins  of  the  hundred  little  sovereignties  into 
which  Germany  was  then  divided.  Frankfort  being  a  place 
of  great  trade,  merchants  resorted  to  it  from  most  of  these 
sovereignties,  each  of  which  had  its  own  coinage  and  its  own 
standard  of  the  purity  of  the  metals  of  which  its  coins  were 
composed.  Hence,  there  was  a  considerable,  though  not 
very  profitable,  business  done  in  Frankfort  in  buying,  sell- 
ing, and  exchanging  coins.  Moses  Rothschild,  though  a  very 
honest  and  respectable  man,  appears  to  have  had  no  partic- 
ular talent  or  audacity  in  business,  and  he  acquired,  there- 
fore, only  that  "modest  competence"  which  everybody 
extols,  and  with  which  no  one  is  content. 


406  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

The  founder  of  the  great  banking-house  was  the  eldest 
son  of  this  worthy  Israelite.  He  was  accustomed  from  his 
youth  up  to  assist  his  father  in  his  business  of  money-chang- 
ing. He  counted  and  sorted  the  coins,  computed  their 
value,  procured  supplies  from  other  money-changers  of  such 
coins  as  were  needed,  carried  deposits  to  the  bank,  and  thus 
obtained  a  most  familiar  and  exact  knowledge  of  the  coin 
system  of  the  whole  world.  He  became  acquainted,  also, 
with  the  artificial  values  which  some  coins  possess  as  speci- 
mens and  curiosities.  This  knowledge  was  the  beginning 
of  his  fortune.  While  still  a  youth,  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
closely  examining  the  bags  of  coin  in  his  father's  coffers, 
and  selecting  from  them  such  as  he  could  sell  at  a  premium 
to  collectors.  It  sometimes  happens  in  Wall  Street,  in  our 
own  day,  that  coins  of  great  value  are  found  in  a  bag  of 
miscellaneous  pieces  ;  but  Wall  Street  men  and  boys  are  too 
busy  to  pick  them  out,  —  as  any  one  may  see  who  will  go 
into  the  office  of  a  Wall  Street  bullion  dealer,  and  see  the 
rapidity  with  which  the  clerks  do  their  work.  But  they 
took  business  more  leisurely  in  Frankfort  ninety  years  ago, 
and  the  boy,  Maier  Rothschild,  found  many  a  prize  among 
his  father's  store. 

It  was  not  the  intention  of  his  father  to  bring  him  up  to 
business.  On  the  contrary,  he  meant  to  make  a  Rabbi  of 
him;  and,  with  that  intent,  sent  him  to  an  institution  in 
which  young  Jews  were  fitted  for  the  ecclesiastical  office. 
The  youth  remained  for  many  months  at  this  establishment. 
Nature,  however,  will  have  her  way  with  all  of  us,  in  spite 
of  our  fathers  and  in  spite  of  ourselves ;  and  so  this  youug 
Rothschild  laid  aside  his  books  of  theology,  and  took  the 
place  of  clerk  in  a  banking-house  in  Hanover.  It  was  imme- 
diately evident  that  finance  was  his  true  vocation.  As  a 
banker's  clerk  he  was  diligent,  prudent,  faithful,  and  skilful 


THE  FOUNDER  Or  THE  ROTHSCHILDS.        407 

in  the  highest  degree,  and  was  trusted  by  his  employers 
with  operations  of  the  first  importance. 

Men  destined  to  a  great  career,  I  have  observed,  generally 
serve  a  long  and  rigorous  apprenticeship  to  it  of  some  kind. 
They  try  their  forming  powers  in  little  things  before  grap- 
pling with  great.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  a  single  instance  of 
a  man  who  achieved  a  success  of  the  first  magnitude  who 
did  not  first  toil  long  in  obscurity. 

Maier  Rothschild  remained  a  banker's  clerk  for  several 
years  before  attempting  to  set  up  for  himself.  At  length  he 
returned  to  his  native  city,  and  there  established  a  small 
business,  similar  in  character  to  that  of  his  father.  Besides 
being  a  money-changer,  he  bought  and  sold  curious  coins, 
jewels,  plate,  and  other  precious  objects.  His  knowledge 
and  long  training  gave  him  such  advantages  that,  by  the 
time  he  was  twenty-seven  years  of  age,  he  was  a  banker  of 
some  note  and  considerable  wealth.  He  was  a  married  man, 
too,  and  was,  in  every  respect,  aH  established  and  prosper- 
ous citizen.  From  this  time  his  wealth  increased  with  a 
rapidity  remarkable  for  that  day ;  so  that,  in  the  year  1780, 
when  he  was  but  thirty-seven  years  of  age,  he  was  already 
living  in  the  style  of  an  opulent  banker,  and  had  already 
removed  into  the  mansion  in  which  he  spent  the  remainder 
of  his  life. 

Doubtless  he  would  have  lived  the  life  of  a  private  banker 
of  Frankfort  to  the  end,  but  for  that  fearful  storm  of  the 
French  Revolution,  which  swept  a  large  quantity  of  the 
wealth  of  the  French  nobility  into  his  coffers.  During  these 
prosperous  years  he  had  been  gaining  something  besides 
money  and  bonds.  He  had  been  accumulating  character, 
He  was  known  to  be  a  man  as  honest  as  he  was  sagacious. 
His  word  was  as  good  as  his  bond.  When,  therefore,  the 
French  emigrants  came,  bringing  with  them  jewels,  plate, 

26 


408  TKIUMPHS  OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  all  that  they  could  seize  in  the  hurry  of  departure,  and 
conceal  during  their  flight,  it  was  in  the  banking-house  of 
Rothschild  that  the  most  precious  of  these  valuables  were 
deposited,  to  be  by  him  invested  or  sold.  His  vaults  were 
filled  with  treasures  not  his  own.  Looking  about  over 
Europe  for  a  place  where  this  property  could  be  safely 
employed,  out  of  the  range  of  the  political  tempest  which 
threatened  the  whole  continent,  he  chose  the  sea-girt  realm 
of  Britain.  To  that  country  a  great  part  of  his  capital  —  his 
own  as  well  as  that  of  others  —  was  transported,  and  ere 
long  he  established  in  London  a  banking-house  to  facilitate 
the  transaction  of  the  business  resulting  from  the  transfer. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  still  only  a  private  banker.  No  king 
had  as  yet  paid  him  tribute ;  he  had  taken  no  government  loan. 
His  introduction  into  the  region  of  grand  finance  occurred  in 
the  year  1801,  when  he  was  fifty-eight  years  of  age.  The 
richest  of  the  smaller  potentates  of  Germany  at  that  time 
was  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse,  who  had  still  in  his  strong  box 
two  million  dollars  of  the  money  which  the  English  govern- 
ment had  paid  him  for  the  hire  of  the  Hessian  troops  in  our 
Revolution.  In  1801,  this  noble  sovereign  was  in  quest  of  a 
person  to  manage  his  financial  concerns,  and  he  asked  one 
of  his  friends  to  recommend  him  a  suitable  individual.  It 
so  happened  that  the  Landgrave's  friend,  General  Estorff, 
had  noticed  the  accuracy  and  good  sense  of  Maier  Rothschild 
many  years  before,  when  the  banker  was  a  banker's  clerk  in 
Hanover.  He  recommended  him  for  the  post,  and  he  was 
summoned  to  the  Landgrave's  residence.  When  he  arrived, 
it  chanced  that  the  mighty  monarch  was  getting  badly 
beaten  in  a  game  of  chess,  by  General  Estorff. 

"  Do  you  understand  chess  ?  "  asked  the  Landgrave. 

w  Yes,  your  highness,"  said  the  banker. 

w  Then  step  up  here,  and  look  at  my  game." 


THE  FOUNDER  OF  THE  ROTHSCHILDS.        409 

Rothschild  obeyed,  and  suggested  the  moves  by  which  the 
game  was  easily  won. 

It  was  enough.  From  that  time  to  the  end  of  his  life,  he 
managed  the  finances  of  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse.  This  gave 
him  such  standing,  and  the  use  of  so  much  capital,  that 
when  the  Danish  government  in  1804  wished  to  borrow  ten 
millions  of  dollars,  he  was  able  to  take  the  whole  loan.  In 
1806,  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse,  an  ally  of  the  King  of  Prus- 
sia, was  involved  in  the  ruin  of  that  monarch,  beaten  by 
Napoleon  in  the  decisive  battle  of  Jena.  The  Landgrave, 
obliged  to  abandon  his  capital,  caused  his  treasure  to  be 
secretly  conveyed  to  Frankfort,  and  deposited  with  Maier 
Rothschild,  who  in  his  turn  had  it  all  safely  conveyed  to 
London.  For  two  or  three  years  he  had  the  use  of  it  with- 
out interest,  on  the  easy  condition  of  keeping  it  safe.  Thus 
strengthened,  he  was  able  to  undertake  to  supply  the  British 
army  in  the  Peninsula  with  money,  and  to  mate  the  stipu- 
lated payments,  on  behalf  of  the  British  government,  to 
Spain  and  Portugal.  As  he  rendered  this  service  on  terms 
proportioned  to  its  difficulty  and  risk,  his  profits  were  enor- 
mous. 

This  able  and  honest  man  died  in  1812,  aged  sixty-nine 
years,  leaving  five  sons  and  five  daughters.  Since  his  death, 
the  house  has  constantly  grown  in  wealth  and  importance, 
and  the  partners  now  live  in  a  style  which  would  formerly 
have  been  considered  extravagant  in  a  king. 

During  the  ninety-eight  years  which  have  elapsed  since  the 
house  was  founded  by  Maier  Rothschild  at  Frankfort,  it  has 
never  failed  to  keep  an  engagement. 


A  MILLIONAIRE  IN  THE  BANKS. 


No  army,  I  suppose,  ever  contained  such  a  variety  of 
characters  and  conditions  as  that  of  the  United  States  during 
the  late  war.  There  were  men  in  it  of  almost  every  race 
and  color;  men  of  every  rank,  —  from  French  princes  lin- 
eally descended  from  Henry  IV. ,  to  the  plantation-slave  ; 
men  of  every  degree  of  moral  worth  and  un worthiness,  — 
from  the  patriot-hero,  giving  his  life  for  his  country,  to  the 
plundering  "  bounty-jumper,"  who  has  since  found  a  suitable 
home  in  a  state-prison.  Among  other  characters,  the 
strangest,  perhaps,  was  a  private  soldier  who  possessed  an 
income  of  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Upon  the 
staffs  of  major-generals  and  at  the  head  of  regiments  there 
were  several  millionnaires  and  sons  of  millionnaires  ;  but  the 
gentleman  of  whom  we  speak  —  Elias  Howe,  Jr.,  the  inven- 
tor of  the  sewing-machine  —  served  in  the  ranks  of  the  Seven- 
teenth Connecticut,  and  refused  every  offer  of  a  commission  ; 
alleging,  as  a  reason,  that  he  was  ignorant  of  military  affairs, 
and  could  render  no  effective  service  to  his  country  except  as  a 
private.  Having  had  occasion  recently  to  gather  information 
respecting  the  origin  and  progress  of  the  sewing-machine,  I 
heard  the  story  of  Mr.  Howe's  enlistment  and  service  from 
the  officers  of  his  regiment,  and  now  avail  myself  of  the 
opportunity  to  repeat  it  to  the  reader. 

He  enlisted  in  July,  1862,  the  second  year  of  the  war. 
The  country,  as  we  all  remember,  had  put  forth  prodigious 
efforts  to  repair  the  calamity  of  Bull  Run,  An  immense 


412  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

army  had  been  assembled  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac, 
which,  after  along  winter  spent  in  organizing  and  drilling  it, 
had  been  swiftly  conveyed  to  Virginia,  and  successfully 
landed  near  Yorktown.  That  proved  to  be  the  end  of  its 
success.  Stopped  for  a  month  at  Yorktown,  until  Richmond 
was  ready  to  withstand  it,  that  mighty  host  of  devoted  men 
came  within  sight  of  the  steeples  of  the  Confederate  capital ; 
whence,  after  a  succession  of  mishaps,  reverses,  and  defeats, 
it  was  driven  back  to  the  James,  and  was  soon  after  ordered 
back  to  its  old  position  on  the  Potomac.  Nothing  in  the 
history  of  the  war  seems  to  me  so  remarkable  as  the  high 
spirit  and  unshaken  resolution  of  the  people,  after  disasters 
so  terrible,  so  unexpected,  and  so  peculiarly  calculated  to 
dishearten  a  nation  unused  to  war. 

!tt  was  July,  1862.  The  army  was  still  on  the  James, 
protected  by  the  gunboats  of  the  navy.  A  new  levy  of 
troops  was  ordered.  Until  this  time,  men  had  not  hung 
back,  and  new  regiments  had  come  in  about  as  fast  as  they 
could  be  equipped.  But,  in  July  of  this  year,  when  the 
ripening  harvest  called  farmers  to  their  fields,  and  the 
tidings  of  defeat  gave  pause  to  those  inclined  to  enlist,  the 
forming  regiments  filled  slowly,  and  there  were  vague  rumors 
in  the  air  of  a  possible  draft.  Then  it  was  that  it  occurred 
to  some  gentlemen  of  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  to  raise  a 
county  regiment,  the  several  companies  of  which  should  be 
composed  of  friends  and  neighbors.  It  was  an  excellent  and 
fruitful  thought.  The  sanction  of  Governor  Buckingham 
was  obtained,  and  a  public  meeting  was  called  for  July  17th, 
to  begin  the  work. 

The  public  anxiety  as  well  as  the  patriotism  of  the  people 
of  Bridgeport  caused  this  to  be  one  of  the  largest  and  most 
earnest  ever  held  in  the  town.  Mr.  Howe  attended  it,  and 
sat  on  the  platform  as  one  of  the  vice-presidents.  When  the 


A  MILLIONNAIRE   IN  THE   BANKS.  413 

meeting  had  been  organized,  it  was  addressed  by  several 
speakers,  who  raised  the  enthusiasm  of  the  crowd  to  the 
highest  point.  Money  was  liberally  subscribed  for  the 
expenses  of  the  proposed  regiment,  —  Messrs.  Wheeler  & 
Wilson  heading  the  list  with  five  thousand  dollars,  and  Elias 
Howe  following  with  one  thousand.  The  whole  sum  raised 
was  twenty-five  thousand  dollars.  This  was  encouraging, 
and  it  was  then  to  be  seen  how  the  citizens  of  Bridgeport 
would  respond  to  the  call  for  services  more  perilous  and 
more  necessary  than  the  subscribing  of  money. 

When  the  time  came  for  inviting  men  to  enlist,  Mr.  Howe 
—  to  the  astonishment  of  his  friends,  for  he  had  never  before 
addressed  a  public  meeting  —  rose  to  his  feet,  and  spoke 
somewhat  as  follows  : — 

"  At  such  a  time  as  this,  every  man  Is  called  upon  to  do  what  he 
can  for  his  country.  I  don't  know  what  I  can  do,  unless  it  is  to 
enlist  and  serve  as  a  private  in  the  Union  army.  I  want  no  posi- 
tion. In  fact,  I  know  nothing  of  military  matters ;  but  I  am  willing 
to  learn,  and  to  do  what  I  can  with  a  musket.  At  any  rate  I  mean 
to  go.  I  have  in  my  hand  a  piece  of  paper  for  the  names  of  those 
who  wish  to  enlist  to-night,  and  my  name  is  at  the  head  of  it." 

With  these  words,  he  laid  the  paper  upon  the  chairman's 
table.  The  excitement  produced  by  this  announcement  can 
neither  be  imagined  nor  described.  Mr.  Howe  was  known 
to  every  person  present,  as  one  of  the  wealthiest  men  in  the 
State,  whose  residence  at  Iranistan  was  as  pleasant  and 
attractive  a  scene  as  could  anywhere  be  found ;  and  to  ex- 
change this  for  the  privations  of  a  camp  seemed  to  the  audi- 
ence, as  it  was,  a  most  remarkable  evidence  of  patriotic 
principle.  Cheer  upon  cheer  expressed  and  relieved  the 
feelings  of  the  excited  multitude. 

The  next  incident  that  occurred  was  one  in  which  the 


414  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

comic  and  the  pathetic  were  blended.  The  coachman  who 
had  driven  Mr.  Howe's  carriage  that  evening,  attracted  by 
the  continual  cheers  within  the  hall,  had  hired  a  boy  to  hold 
his  horses,  and  had  entered  the  building  to  witness  the  pro- 
ceedings. He  was  a  warm-hearted  Irishman,  named  Michael 
Cahill,  past  the  age  of  military  service  as  defined  by  law. 
Upon  hearing  his  employer's  speech,  he  rushed  forward,  and 
clambering  upon  the  platform,  cried  out,  — 

w  Put  down  my  name  too  1  I  can't  bear  to  have  the  old 
man  go  alone." 

So  down  went  the  name  of  Michael  Cahill,  coachman,  next 
to  that  of  Elias  Howe.  Laughter  and  cheers,  mingled  in 
about  equal  proportions,  followed  the  announcement  of 
"  Mike's "  intention.  Other  names  now  came  in  with  great 
rapidity.  A  large  number  of  men  were  obtained  that  night, 
and  such  zeal  and  enthusiasm  were  created  in  the  county  by 
the  events  of  the  evening  that  in  twenty  days  the  Seventeenth 
Connecticut  had  upon  its  rolls  the -names  of  one  thousand  men. 
It  was  commanded  by  Colonel  H.  H.  Noble,  one  of  the  lead- 
ing lawyers  of  Bridgeport. 

A  difficulty  arose  when  Mr.  Howe  bad  to  be  examined  by 
the  surgeon  of  the  regiment,  Dr.  Hubbard.  All  his  life,  the 
inventor  of  the  sewing-machine  had  been  troubled  with  an 
hereditary  lameness.  Indeed,  it  was  owing  to  the  extreme 
fatigue  which  his  daily  labor  as  a  journeyman  machinist 
caused  him,  in  consequence  of  this  lameness,  that  he  set 
about  .inventing  something  by  which  he  hoped  to  earn  his 
living  less  laboriously.  The  probability  is,  that  if  Elias 
Howe  had  had  two  good  legs,  he  would  never  have  invented 
the  sewing-machine.  When  Dr.  Hubbard  hesitated  about 
accepting  him,  and  told  him  that  he  could  not  march,  — 

w  No  matter,"  said  the  inventor,  "  you  must  pass  me.  I  am 
going!" 


A  MILLIONNAIRE   IN   THE   HANKS.  415 

Both  the  officers  and  men  of  the  regiment  soon  discovered 
that  to  have  a  man  in  a  regiment  who  is  both  rich  and  gen- 
erous is  extremely  convenient.  To  some  of  the  field-officers 
he  gave  horses  from  his  stable,  and  to  others  he  lent  them ; 
and  whenever  there  was  delay  or  difficulty  in  procuring  an 
article  necessary  for  the.  regiment's  speedy  departure,  his 
purse  was  always  open  to  supply  the  deficiency.  Early  in 
September,  the  regiment  started  on  its  way  toward  the  seat 
of  war,  and  went  into  camp  near  Baltimore. 

When  the  camp  was  organized  and  the  regiment  entered 
upon  its  routine  duties,  Mr.  Howe  discovered  that  the  doctor 
was  right ;  he  could  not  march  with  a  musket  in  his  hand, 
even  to  the  extent  of  standing  sentry.  But  determined  to 
be  of  service,  he  volunteered  to  serve  the  regiment  as  its 
postmaster,  messenger,  and  expressman.  Sending  home  for 
a  suitable  horse  and  wagon,  he  drove  into  Baltimore  twice 
every  day,  and  brought  to  the  camp  the  letters  and  parcels 
for  the  regiment,  which  he  distributed  from  his  own  tent 
with  his  own  hands.  He  served,  in  short,  as  the  father  of 
the  regiment.  Going  home,  occasionally,  to  Bridgeport, 
where  he  was  then  building  a  large  factory,  he  always  gave 
notice  of  his  intention,  and  made  his  journey  with  a  small 
cargo  of  letters  and  bundles  for  the  families  of  his  comrades, 
and  took  unwearied  pains  in  performing  every  commission 
intrusted  to  him.  As  one  of  the  officers  said  tome,  "He 
would  run  half  over  the  State  to  deliver  a  letter  to  some 
lonely  mother  anxious  for  her  soldier  boy,  or  bring  back  to 
him  in  the  camp  a  favorite  pair  of  boots  which  he  needed 
during  the  rainy  winter  of  Maryland." 

I  once  heard  Mr.  Howe  relate  a  curious  anecdote  of  one 
of  these  journeys.  He  was  sitting  in  the  cars,  behind  two 
wild  secessionists,  who  were  conversing  eagerly  about  the 
war.  One  of  them  said  to  the  other :  — 


416  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

"Yes,  sir !  the  whole  thing  was  got  up  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  fat  contracts  to  to  the  d — d  abolitionists.  There's 
old  Howe,  the  sewing-machine  man,  worth  his  millions ; 
they  have  actually  given  him  the  contract  for  carrying  the 
mail  to  the  army." 

"You  don't  say  so,"  said  the  other. 

"It's  a  fact,"  rejoined  his  friend.  "I  saw  Howe  myself 
riding  in  one  of  the  mail-carts  yesterday." 

Mr.  Howe  smiled,  but  said  nothing. 

Another  story  of  his  warlike  experience  is  related  by 
Colonel  Stephen  A.  Walker,  paymaster  of  the  division  to 
which  Mr.  Howe's  regiment  belonged. 

For  four  months  after  the  Seventeenth  Connecticut  en- 
tered the  field,  the  government  was  so  pressed  for  money 
that  no  payments  to  the  troops  could  be  made,  and,  conse- 
quently, there  was  great  suffering  among  the  families  of  the 
soldiers,  and  a  still  more  painful  anxiety  suffered  by  the  men 
themselves.  One  day,  a  private  soldier  came  quietly  into 
the  paymaster's  office  in  Washington,  and,  as  there  were 
several  officers  already  there  to  be  attended  to,  he  took  his 
seat  in  a  corner,  to  wait  his  turn.  When  the  officers  had 
been  disposed  of,  Colonel  Walker  turned  to  him  and  said,  — 

"  Now,  my  man,  what  can  I  do  for  you?" 

"I  have  called,"  said  the  soldier,  "to  see  about  the  pay- 
ment of  the  Seventeenth  Connecticut." 

The  paymaster,  a  little  irritated  by  what  he  supposed  a, 
needless  and  impertinent  interruption,  told  him,  somewhat 
bluntly,  "that  a  paymaster  could  do  nothing  without  money, 
and  that  until  the  government  could  furnish  some,  it  was 
useless  for  soldiers  to  come  bothering  him  about  the  pay  of 
their  regiments." 

"  I  know,"  said  the  soldier,  "  the  government  is  in  straits, 
and  I  have  called  to  find  out  how  much  money  it  will  take  to 


A  MILLIONNAIKE   IN   THE   RANKS.  417 

give  my  regiment  two  months*  pay,  and  if  you  will  tell  me, 
I  am  ready  to  furnish  the  amount." 

The  officer  stared  with  astonishment,  and  asked  the  name 
of  the  soldier,  who  was  no  other  than  Elias  Howe.  On 
referring  to  his  books,  Colonel  Walker  found  that  the  sum 
required  was  thirty-one  thousand  dollars.  Upon  receiving 
the  information,  the  private  wrote  a  draft  for  the  sum,  and 
received  in  return  a  memorandum  certifying  the  advance, 
and  promising  reimbursement  when  the  government  could 
furnish  the  money. 

Two  or  three  days  after,  at  Fairfax  Court-House,  the  regi- 
ment was  paid,  and  there  were  a  thousand  happy  men  in 
camp.  When  Mr.  Howe's  name  was  called,  he  went  up  to 
the  paymaster's  desk,  received  twenty-eight  dollars  and 
sixty  cents  of  his  own  money,  and  signed  the  receipt  there- 
for, "  Private  Elias  Howe,  Jr."  We  cannot  be  surprised  at 
some  of  the  officers  of  neighboring  regiments  sending  over 
to  inquire  if  they  could  "  borrow "  this  private  for  a  while 
from  the  Seventeenth  Connecticut. 

During  the  winter  Mr.  Howe  was  twice  prostrated  by 
sickness ;  first  by  dysentery,  and  afterwards  by  fever.  It 
was  proposed  to  convey  him  to  the  officers'  hospital ;  but  he 
insisted  on  being  taken  to  the  hospital  of  the  privates,  and 
to  be  treated  in  all  respects  as  a  private  soldier.  There  was 
no  difference,  however,  in  essential  points,  between  the  hos- 
pitals for  officers  and  those  for  private  soldiers. 

When  the  spring  came,  and  the  regiment  was  about  to 
enter  upon  active  service,  and  to  make  long  marches,  it 
became  clear  to  Mr.  Howe  that  he  could  be  nothing  but  an 
encumbrance,  and,  therefore,  after  rendering  all  the  service 
which  a  man  in  his  physical  condition  could  render,  he  reluc- 
tantly asked  a  discharge  and  returned  home.  He  used  to 
say  to  the  soldiers  :  — 


418  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

"I've  got  to  leave  you,  boys.  I'm  of  no  use  here  ;  but 
never  mind ;  when  your  time  is  out,  come  to  me  at  Bridge- 
port. I'm  building  a  large  sewing-machine  factory  there, 
and  I  shall  have  plenty  of  work  for  those  who  want  it." 

Many  of  his  comrades  took  him  at  his  word,  and  are  now 
at  work  in  the  factory  in  various  capacities.  Honest  "  Mike," 
after  faithfully  serving  out  his  term,  went  to  his  old  home, 
and  has  advanced  from  driving  Mr.  Howe's  carriage  to  driv- 
ing his  own  horse  and  cart,  which  he  is  still  doing. 

Mr.  Howe's  enlistment  to -serve  in  the  ranks  of  the  army 
was  due  to  a  genuine  patriotic  impulse.  An  officer  of  his 
regiment  related  to  me  a  conversation  which  he  had  with  him 
one  gloomy  day  in  camp,  when  bad  news  was  coming  in  from 
the  West. 

"  Well,"  said  the  officer,  w  what  do  you  think  the  trash  we 
call  our  property  will  be  worth  when  this  is  all  over  ?  " 

"  So  that  this  thing  is  settled  right?  said  Mr.  Howe,  w  I 
don't  care  a  copper.  As  for  me,  give  me  three  acres  of 
land,  and  I  can  earn  my  living  upon  it,  and  that's  all  I 
want." 


HOW  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

LEARNED    TO 

NOMINATE  CANDIDATES  FOR  THE  PRESIDENCY. 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON  once  said,  that  the  mode  of  elect- 
ing a  President  prescribed  by  the  Constitution  "  was  intended 
to  secure  to  prominent  talents  and  virtues  the  first  honors  of 
our  country,  and  forever  to  disgrace  the  barbarous  institu- 
tions by  which  executive  power  is  to  be  transmitted  through 
the  organs  of  generation."  If  this  view  of  the  matter  be 
correct,  —  if  the  Presidency  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  means  of 
rewarding  services  and  honoring  merit,  —  then  it  must  be 
confessed  we  have  failed  to  carry  out  the  design  of  the  Con- 
stitution. On  several  occasions,  indeed,  the  people  have 
bestowed  the  Presidency  upon  men  prominent,  above  all 
others,  for  virtue  and  talent;  but,  at  other  times,  men 
have  been  selected  for  their  insignificance,  rather  than  their 
prominence,  and  merely  as  representing  the  platform  of 
their  party.  But  under  a  government  such  as  ours,  so  long 
as  it  is  honestly  administered,  if  great  talents  in  the  Presi- 
dential chair  might  essentially  benefit  the  nation,  inferior 
talents  cannot  materially  retard  its  progress.  Under  John 
Tyler,  the  United  States  continued  to  advance  in  wealth  and 
in  civilization ;  under  George  Washington,  it  did  no  more. 
It  is  desirable,  for  many  reasons,  that  the  President  of  the 
United  States  should  be  an  able,  honorable,  and  prudent 
man.  All  we  mean  to  assert  is,  that  the  destinies  of  the 
country  do  not  depend  upon  an  individual;  and,  if  this  had 
before  been  doubtful,  recent  events  have  established  it. 


420  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTEKPBISE. 

It  may  be  interesting  at  this  stage  of  our  affairs  to  cast  a 
glance  at  previous  Presidential  elections,  and  note  the 
various  processes  by  which,  among  the  mass  of  American 
citizens,  a  suitable  chief  magistrate  has  been  found.  As  the 
mode  of  electing  a  President  has  always  been  prescribed  by 
law,  the  chief  difficulty  has  been  the  nomination  of  candi- 
dates. We  have  usually  had  in  the  United  States  two  polit- 
ical parties  nearly  equal  in  strength  and  numbers,  but  we 
have  never  had  two  men  in  the  country  so  clearly  represen- 
tative of  the  divergent  tendencies  embodied  in  those  par- 
ties, that  the  people  spontaneously  looked  up  to  them  as 
their  standard-bearers. 

So  far  as  we  know,  but  one  man  has  ever  governed  a 
nation  who  was  the  spontaneous  and  unanimous  choice  of  its 
inhabitants.  That  man  was  George  Washington.  In  him 
alone,  among  the  sons  of  men,  were  combined  all  the  quali- 
ties which  could  influence  a  free  and  virtuous  people  to  select 
him  as  their  chief.  In  social  position  he  was  the  first  gen- 
tleman of  America,  and  that  was  a  far  more  important  con- 
sideration eighty  years  ago  than  it  is  now.  His  private 
character  was  spotless.  His  prudence  had  been  subjected  to 
every  test,  and  never  found  insufficient.  His  military  repu- 
tation, so  captivating  to  the  multitude,  was  only  equalled, 
among  living  generals,  by  that  of  Frederick  the  Great. 
Possessing  the  traits  of  character  which  inspire  confidence, 
an  imposing  personal  presence,  and  a  splendor  of  reputation 
unequalled  in  America,  he  must  have  been  the  choice  of  the 
American  people,  in  whatever  mode  his  name  had  been  pre- 
sented for  the  their  suffrages.  Every  electoral  vote  was  cast 
for  him,  and  he  took  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  Government 
with  the  approval  of  every  individual  voter  in  every  State 
of  the  Union. 

During  General  Washington's  first  term,  the  two  parties 


CANDIDATES   FOB   THE   PRESIDENCY.  421 

were  formed  which,  under  various  names,  have  ever  since 
contended  for  the  supremacy.  Each  of  these  parties  con- 
sisted at  first  of  one  man.  The  first  American  Democrat, 
in  the  party  sense  of  the  word,  was  Thomas  Jefferson,  Sec- 
retary of  State ;  and  the  First  Federalist  was  Alexander 
Hamilton,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  These  two  men, 
associated  in  the  Cabinet  of  President  Washington,  soon 
discovered  that  they  differed  fundamentally  on  almost  every 
point  on  which  it  is  desirable  that  Cabinet  ministers  should 
agree.  The  French  Revolution  was  the  great  topic  at  that 
time.  Jefferson,  fresh  from  France,  hailed  that  mighty 
revolt  with  the  keenest  approval,  for  he  had  witnessed  the 
oppression  which  justified  it.  Hamilton  from  the  first 
regarded  it  with  dread  and  horror.  Hamilton  had  a  low 
opinion  of  mankind,  and  thought  that  government  must 
necessarily  be  both  powerful  and  imposing.  Jefferson,  on 
the  contrary,  respected  his  fellow-citizens,  and  desired  their 
government  to  be  simple,  inexpensive,  and  strictly  limited. 
The  consequence  was,  that  the  two  Secretaries,  as  Jefferson 
remarked,  were  "  pitted  against  each  other  every  day  in  the 
Cabinet  like  two  fighting-cocks  "  ;  and  this  dissension,  com- 
municating itself  to  their  friends  and  followers,  gradually 
divided  the  nation  into  parties. 

Those  who  sided  with  Jefferson  were  called  Republicans, 
and  those  who  sympathized  with  Hamilton  were  called  Fed- 
eralists. The  Republican  party  embraced  three  descriptions 
of  persons :  first,  young  men  of  intellect  and  enthusiasm, 
like  Jefferson  himself,  who  had  faith  in  their  fellow-men,  and 
believed  in  the  progress  of  their  species  ;  secondly,  a  consid- 
erable number  of  the  wealthy  planters  of  the  South,  who, 
without  being  Democrats,  desired  the  General  Government 
to  be  so  simple  and  limited  as  not  to  detract  from  the  impor- 
tance of  the  State  Governments ;  thirdly,  the  more  intelli- 


422  raiuMPHS  OP  ENTERPRISE. 

gent  artisans  and  poor  men  of  the  North,  who  were  naturally 
attracted  by  the  equalizing  doctrines  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  The  Federal  party  included  a  large  majority 
of  the  men  of  property  and  education,  —  the  men  who  in 
all  times  and  lands  are  naturally  disposed  to  conservatism. 
These  solid  men  of  the  land,  and  the  voters  whom  they  influ- 
enced, constituted  the  Federal  party. 

The  first  contest  between  these  parties  occurred  in  1793, 
when  for  the  second  time  a  President  and  Vice-President 
were  to  be  chosen.  Washington  was  unanimously  re- 
elected,  but  for  the  second  office  there  was  an  animated 
strife. 

At  the  first  election  in  1788,  John  Adams  had  received 
thirty-four  electoral  votes  out  of  sixty-seven  for  the  Vice- 
Presidency,  and  the  rest  were  divided  among  ten  other  can- 
didates, of  whom  no  one  received  more  than  nine.  In  1792, 
the  party  lines  were  strictly  drawn.  A  caucus  of  the 
Republican  members  of  Congress  nominated  for  the  Vice- 
Presidency  George  Clinton,  of  New  York,  and  a  caucus  of 
Federal  members  nominated  John  Adams.  In  the  short 
space  of  four  years  party  discipline  had  become  so  well 
developed  in  the  country,  that  every  elector  but  five  cast  his 
vote  for  one  of  these  candidates.  John  Adams  received 
seventy-seven  electoral  votes :  George  Clinton,  fifty.  It 
was  only  far-off  Kentucky  that  had  not  yet  fallen  into  line. 
Kentucky  cast  its  vote  for  Thomas  Jefferson,  aud  one  elec- 
tor in  South  Carolina  voted  for  Aaron  Burr. 

A  caucus  of  members  of  Congress,  then,  was  the  first 
method  hit  upon  for  the  selection  of  candidates.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  conceive  of  any  other  plan  suited  to  the  state  of 
things  at  that  time.  A  National  Convention,  even  if  it  had 
been  thought  of,  would  have  absorbed  the  greater  part  of  a 
year,  and  there  was  then  no  Press  which  could  in  any  sense 


CANDIDATES  FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY.  423 

be  called  national.  The  newspapers  were  few  and  of  limited 
circulation,  and  a  nomination  by  them  would  have  been  con- 
sidered impertinent  by  the  country  gentlemen  then  so  influ- 
ential. The  Congressional  caucuses  were  held  with  closed 
doors,  and  no  parff  of  their  proceedings  was  communicated 
to  the  public  except  the  result.  It  is  obvious  that  such  a 
mode  of  nomination  was  open  to  objections,  since  it  gave 
opportunity  for  personal  intrigue  and  solicitation,  and  it 
rendered  a  President  who  desired  reelection,  and  a  Cabinet 
minister  ambitious  of  the  succession,  subservient  to  those 
members  of  Congress  upon  whom  would  soon  devolve  the 
nomination  of  candidates,  and  whose  nomination  was  fre- 
quently equivalent  to  an  election.  These  objections,  how- 
ever, though  immediately  apparent  to  the  few  thoughtful 
observers,  were  not  at  first  regarded  by  the  people,  —  cer- 
tainly not  considered  formidable.  Five  Presidents  in  succes- 
sion were  nominated  in  this  manner,  who,  upon  the  whole, 
were  the  men  best  entitled  to  the  confidence  of  their  party, 
and  all  of  whom  served  their  country  well. 

In  1796,  when  it  was  known  that  General  Washington 
would  retire  at  the  expiration  of  his  second  term,  there  was 
no  man  in  the  Federal  party  of  such  commanding  promi- 
nence as  to  be  its  natural  and  spontaneous  choice.  The 
Federalist  who  was  most  active  and  who  possessed  most  of 
personal,  force  and  influence,  was  Alexander  Hamilton ;  and 
it  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  so  shining  a  light  in  the 
Federal  party  should  never  have  been  thought  of  for  the 
Presidency.  It  is  true,  he  was  not  a  native  of  the  United 
States  ;  but  a  special  clause  of  the  Constitution  had  provided 
for  such  cases  as  his,  by  making  foreign-bora  citizens 
eligible  to  the  Presidency  who  had  been  citizens  at  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution.  Why,  then,  was  the  creator 
and  soul  of  the  Federal  party  never  its  official  head  ?  Partly 

27 


424  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

because  he  never  desired  it.  He  was  not  ambitious  of  official 
distinction.  Whatever  Alexander  Hamilton  did  in  politics, 
whether  wrong  or  right,  was  done  with  a  single  eye  to  the 
public  good.  If  he  intrigued,  he  intrigued  for  his  country. 
If  he  used  improper  means  for  the  success  of  his  party,  it 
was  because  he  believed  that  the  honor  and  safety  of  his 
country  depended  absolutely  upon  its  being  governed  by 
Federalists.  Destitute  of  fortune,  he  was  compelled  to 
devote  himself  to  the  labors  of  his  profession ;  and  at  that 
day  a  man  but  forty  years  of  age,  dependent  upon  his  indus- 
try for  his  livelihood,  had  not  that  kind  of  weight  in  the 
country  which  would  have  drawn  attention  to  him  as  a 
possible  candidate  for  the  highest  office.  Besides  this,  he 
was  the  author  of  the  very  measures  most  odious  to  the 
Republicans.  He  was,  we  may  say,  the  Charles  Simmer  of 
the  Federalists ;  and  who  has  ever  seriously  proposed  Charles 
Suniner  for  the  Presidency? 

The  Federal  members  of  Congress  in  1796  recommended 
to  their  fellow-citizens  John  Adams  for  the  Presidency,  and 
Thomas  Pinckney  for  the  Vice-Presidency.  The  Republican 
members  nominated  Thomas  Jefferson  and  Aaron  Burr. 
Here  we  see  at  once  both  the  excellence  and  the  perils  of 
this  mode  of  nomination.  Adams,  Jefferson,  and  Pinckney 
were  fit  and  proper  names  to  be  presented  for  the  consider- 
ation of  their  fellow-citizens.  The  impetuous  and  unmanage- 
able Adams,  during  the  seven  years  of  his  Vice-Presidency, 
had  been  in  a  position  which  kept  him  aloof  from  party 
politics,  and  concealed  from  those  around  him  his  eminent 
unfitness  to  rale.  His  revolutionary  services,  his  diplomatic 
career,  his  oratorical  talents,  his  fine  personal  presence,  and 
the  English  cast  of  his  mind,  made  him  a  suitable  represen- 
tative of  the  party  with  which  he  sympathized. 

Thomas  Jefferson  —  the  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 


CANDIDATES  FOR  THE  PRESIDENCY.         425 

pendence,   the   conspicuous   champion   of  France   and  the 
defender  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  first  Democrat 
of  his  age  —  was  peculiarly  entitled  to  the  suffrages  of  the 
party  himself  had  created,     Pinckney,  too,  as  a  member  of 
an   important  and  wealthy   Southern   family,  of  dignified 
demeanor  and  respectable  talents,  could  not  have  been  con- 
sidered out  of  place  in  the  chair  of  the  Senate.     But  Aaron 
Burr  —  what  Was  he,  and  what  had  he  done,  that  at  the  age 
of  forty  he  should  have  been  reckoned  a  fit  man  to  succeed 
John  Adams   in  the   second   office  ?     His   nomination  was 
unquestionably  due  to  the  fact,  that,  having  sat  in  the  Senate 
for  six  years,  he  had  brought  to  bear  upon  members  of  Con- 
gress at  once  the  magic  of  his  personal  presence  and  the  arts 
of  the  politician.     A  popular  Convention  might  not  have 
selected  either  of  these  names ;  or,  if  either,  the  dexterity 
of  a  Burr  might  have  had  a  better  chance  than  the  earnest 
wisdom  and  sublime  humanity  of  a  Jefferson.     We  can  say, 
that  through  the  instrumentality  of  a  Congressional  caucus, 
the  best  attainable  statesmen  were  sometimes  placed  in  nom- 
ination, and  only  once  the  mere  politician. 

Candidates  in  those  simple  old  days  were  usually  passive, 
and  if  they  were  not  so,  it  was  felt  to  be  dishonorable.  The 
letters,  diaries,  and  private  memoranda  of  Washington,  John 
Adams,  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  John  Quincy  Adams  con- 
vince us  that  neither  of  those  gentlemen  wrote  a  line,  or 
uttered  a  word,  designed  or  calculated  to  promote  their  own 
elevation  or  to  prevent  that  of  another.  In  such  a  man  as 
John  Adams,  infatuated  as  he  was  with  a  consciousness  of 
his  transcendent  merits,  such  delicacy  as  this  was  highly 
honorable.  There  is  an  amusing  passage  in  one  of  his  let- 
ters, written  a  few  days  after  his  inauguration,  which  we 
may  quote :  "It  is  a  delicate  thing,"  he  says,  "for  me  to 
speak  of  the  late  election.  To  myself,  personally,  my  elec- 


426  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

tion  might  be  a  matter  of  indifference,  or  rather  of  aversion. 
Had  Mr.  Jay,  or  some  others,  been  in  question,  it  might 
have  less  mortified  my  vanity,  and  infinitely  less  alarmed  my 
apprehensions  for  the  public.  But  to  see  such  a  character 
as  Jefferson,  and,  much  more,  such  an  unknown  being  as 
Pinckney,  brought  over  my  head,  and  trampling  on  the  bel- 
lies of  hundreds  of  other  men,  infinitely  his  superiors  in 
talent,  services,  and  reputation,  filled  me  with  apprehensions 
for  the  safety  of  us  all.  It  demonstrated  to  me  that,  if  the 
project  succeeded,  our  Constitution  could  not  have  lasted 
four  years.  We  should  have  been  set  afloat,  and  landed  the 
Lord  knows  where.  That  must  be  a  sordid  people  indeed  — 
a  people  destitute  of  a  sense  of  honor,  equity,  and  character 

—  that  could  submit  to  be  governed,  and  see  hundreds  of  its 
most  meritorious  public  men  governed,  by  a  Pinckney,  under 
an  elective  government.     Hereditary  government,  when  it 
imposes  young,  new,  inexperienced  men  upon  the  public,  has 
its  compensations  and  equivalents,  but  elective  government 
has  none.     I  mean  by  this  no  disrespect  to  Mr.  Pinckney. 
I  believe  him  to  be  a  worthy  man.     I  speak  only  by  compar- 
ison with  others." 

This  passage  shows  at  once  the  weakness  of  the  man,  and 
the  error  of  .his  party.  In  their  view,  men  were  everything, 

—  institutions,  principles,  people,  were  subordinate.     Hap- 
pily for  us,  this  is  not  the  case ;  for,  if  it  had  been,  a  man  so 
fussy,  so  vain,  and  so  unteachable  as  Adams,  might  have 
destroyed  the  country,  instead  of  merely  ruining  the  Federal 
party. 

During  the  four  years  of  Mr.  Adams's  administration, 
Vice-Presiclent  Jefferson,  though  presiding  over  the  Senate, 
and  performing  no  independent  action,  constantly  grew  in 
the  affections  and  the  esteem  of  the  Republican  leaders. 
His  influence  over  those  around  him  was  due  to  the  capti- 


CANDIDATES   FOB   THE   PRESIDENCY.  427 

vating  power  of  truth,  and  the  persuasive  eloquence  with 
which  he  expounded  •  it  in  conversation.  He  had  never 
served  his  country  in  the  field,  and  he  was  as  little  of  an 
orator  as  General  Grant.  He  probably  never  made  a  speech 
of  fifteen  minutes'  length  in  his  life,  and  never  addressed  a 
popular  audience.  The  public  knew  him  as  the  man  who 
had  abolished  in  Virginia  the  laws  of  Primogeniture  and  the 
legal  supremacy  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  — the  twin  meas- 
ures which  annihilated  caste,  and  set  religion  free.  They 
honored  him  as  the  great  writer,  who  had  known  how  to 
express  with  force  and  dignity  the  feeling  and  the  determina- 
tion of  America  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  They 
knew  him  as  the  man  who  could  forgive  the  violence  and 
even  the  cruelty  of  the  revolutionists  in  France,  easier  than 
he  could  forgive  the  infinite  turpitude  of  their  oppressors. 
These  things,  however,  might  not  have  won  for  him  the 
plaudits  of  a  miscellaneous  convention. 

Again  we  find  the  name  of  Burr  associated  in  the  Presi- 
dential canvass  with  that  of  the  illustrious  Democrat.  A 
Congressional  caucus,  we  again  see,  was  not  infallible  in  its 
palmiest  days,  since,  while  nominating  a  philosopher  and 
statesman,  it  could  at  the  same  time  recommend  to  the  peo- 
ple an  adroit  politician,  — a  man  who,  perhaps,  had  as  little 
of  the  true  Democrat  in  him  as  any  one  then  living.  Burr 
was  chosen  by  the  caucus,  simply  in  recognition  of  his  skill 
as  a  political  manager.  As  it  was  the  State  of  New  York 
which  decided  the  election  in  favor  of  the  Republicans,  it 
was  agreed  in  the  caucus  that  the  candidate  for  the  second 
office  should  be  a  New  Yorker,  and  Burr  carried  the  day 
against  Chancellor  Livingston  and  George  Clinton,  both  of 
whom  were  superior  to  himself  in  age,  fortune,  services,  and 
social  rank. 

A  dastardly  weapon  early  employed  in  our  Presidential 


428  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

contests  was  calumny;  but  the  wounds  which  it  inflict&d 
were  never  mortal.  We  may  assert  that  slander  has  never 
seriously  harmed  a  public  man,  though  it  has  frequently  aided 
one.  Hamilton,  accused  of  peculation,  could  only  refute  the 
charge  by  confessing  himself  an  adulterer ;  but  neither  the 
He  nor  the  truth  lessened  his  influence  as  a  politician,  nor 
indeed  lowered  his  character  as  a  man ;  for  those  who 
lamented  his  immorality,  honored  its  frank  acknowledgment. 
Jefferson  was  denounced  as  an  atheist,  and  it  was  said  that  his 
plantation  swarmed  with  the  yellow-faced  proofs  of  his  licen- 
tiousness. These  accusations  gained  for  him  more  votes  than 
they  lost.  The  virtuous  John  Adams  was  accused  of  im- 
porting mistresses  from  England,  but  no  one  regarded  the 
ridiculous  tale.  Such  calumnies  as  these  had  one  pernicious 
effect:  they  prevented  well-founded  charges  from  being 
believed.  Aaron  Burr,  for  example,  was  neither  a  moral 
nor  an  honest  man;  but  in  the  midst  of  such  a  torrent  of 
groundless  slanders,  who  could  believe  that  the  candidate 
for  the  Vice-Presidency  was  profligate  or  debauched  ?  So,  in 
later  times,  when  true  representations  of  the  violence  of 
Andrew  Jackson  were  given  to  the  public,  people  disbelieved 
them  as  a  matter  of  course. 

Skilful  politicians  in  these  modern  days  have  learned 
wisdom  from  the  experience  of  their  predecessors.  We  have 
known  instances,  during  the  last  few  years,  of  the  best- 
founded  objections  to  the  private  character  of  candidates 
being  deliberately  withheld  from  the  public,  from  the  convic- 
tion that  they  would  benefit  rather  than  injure. 

A  profound  peace  settled  upon  the  politics  of  the  country 
after  the  inauguration  of  Jefferson  in  1801.  That  great  mail 
knew  the  importance  of  little  things .  The  stately  ceremonies 
and  tedious  etiquette  of  the  White  House  were  immediately 
laid  aside,  and  a  republican  simplicity  characterized  all  the 


CANDIDATES   FOR   THE   PRESIDENCY.  429 

intercourse  between  the  President  and  his  fellow-citizens. 
A  coach  and  four  no  longer  conveyed  the  President  through 
the  miie  of  Washington.  When  Mr.  Jefferson  had  occasion 
to  attend  at  the  Capitol,  he  rode  thither  on  horseback,  unat- 
tended, and  tied  his  horse  to  a  post  before  entering  the 
building.  While  such  trifles  as  these  enchanted  the  multi- 
tude, wise  men  were  gratified  to  see  the  national  affairs  con- 
ducted with  a  dignity,  wisdom,  and  economy,  which,  we 
truly  believe,  have  never  been  equalled  in  the  government  of 
any  nation.  It  cannot  be  that  Jefferson  was  a  chimera  of 
the  popular  imagination.  No  man's  conduct  and  character 
have  ever  endured  so  long  and  keen  a  scrutiny  as  his,  and 
he  retained  to  the  last  the  veneration  of  a  great  majority  of 
the  American  people.  Such  an  ascendency  as  he  maintained 
for  thirty  years  over  the  popular  mind  was  not  due  to  any 
splendor  of  talent,  or  to  the  eclat  of  military  exploits  ;  it  was 
the  honest  tribute  of  an  intelligent  people  to  the  greatest  and 
best  of  their  servants.  Thomas  Jefferson  ruled  the  United 
States,  by  himself  and  his  disciples,  for  twenty-four  years. 
Indeed,  we  may  say,  with  considerable  truth,  that  the  United 
States  has  only  had  four  Presidents,  namely  :  George  Wash- 
ington, Thomas  Jefferson,  Andrew  Jackson,  and  Abraham 
Lincoln.  The  rest  have  been  satellites,  disciples,  or  acci- 
dents. 

In  1808,  two  men  were  prominent  above  all  others  for  the 
succession,  and  they  were  prominent  chiefly  because  Thomas 
Jefferson  was  known  to  prefer  and  honor  them.  These  were 
James  Madison,  Secretary  of  State,  and  James  Monroe,  the 
negotiator  who  had  recently  purchased  Louisiana  from  Napo- 
leon. Of  these  two,  Monroe  was  the  man  whose  "record," 
as  we  term  it,  had  most  in  it  which  the  people  could  appre- 
ciate. Twice  wounded,  and  twice  promoted  in  the  Revolu- 
tion, known  to  be  favored  by  General  Washington,  employed 


430  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

by  Adams  in  foreign  service,  and  recalled  from  France 
because  his  sympathies  for  the  Revolutionists  were  too  man- 
ifest, and  their  regard  for  him  too  conspicuous,  a  law-student 
with  Jefferson,  a  Virginian  of  good  family,  blessed  with  a 
lovely  and  attractive  wife,  —  he  had  recently  crowned  his 
diplomatic  career  by  succeeding  in  the  purchase  of  Louisiana, 
two  weeks  after  his  arrival  in  Paris.  The  merit  of  this  great 
acquisition  seemed  to  be  chiefly  his,  though  it  was  not ;  and 
there  was  a  considerable  party  of  Republicans  who  desired 
to  reward  it  by  elevating  him  to  the  chief  magistracy.  He 
was  very  far  indeed  from  being  a  great  man.  The  spirit  of 
command  was  not  in  him,  nor  had  he  the  tact  which  fre- 
quently supplies  its  place.  He  aspired  to  the  highest  hon- 
ors of  the  State,  and  he  saw,  not  without  repining,  that  the 
preference  of  Mr.  Jefferson  for  his  rival  was  likely  to  defer 
the  gratification  of  his  wishes.  Mr.  Jefferson  has  informed 
posterity,  that  in  this  contest  he  maintained  an  absolute  neu- 
trality, and  we  have  not  the  slightest  question  of  the  fact. 
But  Mr.  Jefferson's  preference  for  Madison  was  evident,  and 
such  was  the  ascendency  of  the  President  in  ^the  Republican 
party,  that  the  preference  was  decisive  of  Mr.  Madison's 
nomination  by  the  Congressional  caucus.  That  nomination 
was  made,  however,  with  the  understanding  that  Monroe  was 
to  be  James  Madison's  successor.  It  is  surprising  to  notice 
under  what  discipline  the  Democratic  party  was  at  that  early 
day.  Monroe,  who  was  the  favorite  of  the  extreme  Repub- 
licans, such  as  Andrew  Jackson,  received  but  three  votes  in 
the  Congressional  caucus,  out  of  eighty-nine,  while  James 
Madison,  the  "regular  candidate"  of  the  party,  received 
eighty-three*  Monroe,  we  may  gather  from  the  correspon- 
dence of  the  time,  was  restive  under  his  defeat ;  but  he  was 
recalled  to  his  duty,  and  reconciled  to  his  fate,  by  a  few  kind 
'ind  wise  lines  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  Jefferson. 


CANDIDATES   FOB   THE   PRESIDENCY.  431 

Of  all  the  men  elected  by  universal  suffrage  to  the  chief 
magistracy  of  a  nation,  the  one  that  was  least  likely  to  be 
spontaneously  elected  was  James  Madison.  In  personal 
appearance  and  demeanor,  dressed  as  he  was  always  in  a  suit 
of  black,  he  was  more  like  a  student  than  a  man  of  the  world. 
A  plain,  sound,  and  courteous  speaker,  there  was  neither 
great  force  nor  brilliancy  in  his  oratory.  He  was  a  man  of 
the  closet,  far  more  able  to  form  a  correct  opinion  respecting 
government,  than  to  administer  government  in  times  of 
difficulty.  A  relative  of  Jefferson,  who  was  much  with  him 
in  his  old  age,  has  informed  us  that  Thomas  Jefferson 
respected  more  highly  the  understanding  of  James  Madison, 
and  deferred  to  it  more,  than  to  that  of  any  other  man  of  his 
time.  It  is  not,  however,  the  wisdom  of  the  cloister  which 
can  conduct  a  young  nation  with  honor  and  success  through 
a  war  with  an  ancient  and  powerful  empire.  That  the  disas- 
ters of  the  war  of  1812  did  not  prevent  the  reelection  of 
Mr.  Madison  is  a  proof,  at  once,  of  Jefferson's  commanding 
influence,  of  the  strict  discipline  of  the  Democratic  party, 
and,  above  all,  of  the  good  sense  of  the  American  people. 
Whatever  might  have  been  Mr.  Madison's  shortcomings,  it 
was  not  clear  to  the  party  or  to  the  public  that  any  one  else 
would  do  better,  and  "  it  is  no  time,"  as  Mr.  Lincoln 
remarked, "  to  swap  horses  when  you  are  swimming  a  stream." 
When  some  weak  brethren  of  the  party  faltered  in  their  sup- 
port of  the  President,  and  besought  Mr.  Jefferson  to  come  to 
his  aid  in  the  Cabinet,  he  replied,  and  that,  too,  at  a  time  of 
extreme  despondency  in  the  public  mind  :  "  From  three  and 
thirty  years'  trial,  I  can  say  conscientiously,  that  I  do  not 
know  in  the  world  a  man  of  purer  integrity,  more  dispassion- 
ate, disinterested,  and  devoted  to  genuine  republicanism ;  nor 
could  I,  in  the  whole  scope  of  America  and  Europe,  point 
out  an  abler  head.  He  may  be  illy  seconded  by  others, 


432  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

betrayed  by  the  Hulls  and  Arnolds  of  our  country, — for 
such  there  are  in  every  country,  and  with  sorrow  and  suffer- 
ing we  know  it,  —  but  what  man  can  do,  will  be  done  by 
Mr.  Madison.  I  hope,  therefore,  there  will  be  no  difference 
among  Kepublicans  as  to  his  reelection." 

Supported  thus  by  the  venerable  chief  of  the  Democrats, 
and  aided  by  cheering  victories  upon  the  ocean,  Mr.  Madi- 
son was  reflected  by  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  electoral 
votes,  to  De  Witt  Clinton's  eighty-nine. 

When  the  war  closed  in  a  blaze  of  triumph  at  New  Orleans, 
in  1815,  the  Federal  party  was  a  thing  of  the  past.  It  may 
be  laid  down  as  a  rule,  that  a  political  party  which  gives  a 
doubtful  support  to  the  administration  during  a  war  in  which 
the  honor  and  safety  of  the  country  are  at  stake,  and  from 
which  the  nation  issues  triumphant,  will  never  regain  power 
under  its  old  name  and  organization.  This  law  fcas  been 
twice  exemplified  in  the  history  of  the  United  States.  The 
Federal  party  ceased  to  exist  in  1815,  and  James  Monroe 
succeeded  to  the  Presidency  in  1817,  and  was  reflected  in 
1821,  with  the  nearest  approach  to  unanimity  the  country 
has  seen  since  the  days  of  Washington. 

Another  law  of  politics  may  be  laid  down :  whenever  a 
political  party  has  practically  extinguished  the  party  in  oppo- 
sition to  it,  it  will  speedily  divide.  Even  if  there  did  not 
exist  a  necessity  for  this  in  human  nature,  it  would  occur 
sooner  or  later  from  the  ambition  of  rival  chiefs. 

If  James  Monroe  had  been  a  man  of  commanding  char- 
acter, or  even  a  thorough-going  partisan,  it  would  have  been 
easy  for  him  to  continue  the  Jeffersonian  dynasty  by  choos- 
ing his  successor.  But  he  was  neither.  So  moderate  had 
he  become,  that  he  was  disposed  to  give  one  of  the  places  in 
his  Cabinet  to  a  Federalist.  "While  I  am  here,"  he  wrote 
to  General  Jackson,  a  few  days  before  his  inauguration,  "  I 


CANDIDATES   FOR   THE   PRESIDENCY.  433 

shall  make  the  administration,  first,  for  the  country  and  its 
cause ;  secondly,  to  give  effect  to  the  government  of  the 
people,  through  me,  for  the  term  of  my  appointment,  not  for 
the  aggrandizement  of  any  one''  In  this  spirit  the  good- 
natured  and  hospitable  old  soldier  conducted  his  administra- 
tion, and  consequently  neither  of  the  able  men  who  aspired 
to  the  succession  was  able  to  use  the  administration  for  the 
promotion  of  his  views. 

The  leading  competitors  were  six  in  number,  and  each  of 
them  possessed  some  signal  advantage  over  the  others. 
John  Quiucy  Adams,  as  Secretary  of  State,  was  in  the  line 
of  succession  which  the  usage  of  twenty-four  years  had 
established.  William  H.  Crawford,  by  withdrawing  his 
name  from  the  caucus  of  1816  in  favor  of  Mr.  Monroe,  had 
acquired  a  kind  of  right,  which  was  acknowledged,  to  a 
nomination  by  the  caucus  of  1824 ;  and  he  was  indeed  regarded 
as  the  rightful  candidate  of  the  party.  Henry  Clay,  the  first 
orator  of  his  time,  who  had  carried  the  war  of  1812  upon  his 
shoulders, — the  favorite  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
over  which  he  had  presided  for  fourteen  years,  —  could 
form  well-founded  hopes  of  success  before  the  people.  Cal- 
houn  and  De  Witt  Clinton  were  also  prominent  candidates  ; 
and,  in  distant  Tennessee,  there  was  Andrew  Jackson,  the 
most  popular  man  then  living  in  tfie  country,  whom  the 
Legislature  of  his  State  had  placed  in  nomination. 

As  Mr.  Crawford  was  the  predestined  candidate  of  the 
Congressional  caucus,  neither  of  his  rivals  could  hope  for 
the  prize  unless  the  caucus  system  were  abolished.  Accord- 
ingly, such  a  clamor  was  fomented  in  the  country  against 
"King  Caucus,"  that  the  prestige  of  that  potentate  was 
destroyed.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  party  managers  admitted 
the  public  to  witness  the  deliberations  of  the  caucus.  On 
the  evening  appointed  for  its  meeting,  while  the  galleries  of 


434  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  House  of  Representatives  were  crowded  with  spectators, 
there  were  but  sixty-six  members  of  Congress  upon  the  floor, 
who  nominated  Crawford,  amid  the  derision  of  the  country, 
and  without  increasing  his  strength  in  any  section  of  it. 

King  Caucus  was  thus  dethroned  without  leaving  an  heir 
to  succeed  him,  and,  for  the  next  eight  years,  there  was  no 
settled  and  recognized  plan  of  nominating  candidates. 
Andrew  Jackson,  first  recommended  to  the  people  by  the 
Legislature  of  Tennessee,  indorsed  by  State  Conventions  and 
public  meetings,  was  a  name  of  magic  with  the  people,  and 
required  little  artificial  aid.  Mr.  Adams's  battle  was  fought 
chiefly  by  the  Press  and  the  usual  local  machinery.  This 
want  of  system  in  nominating  candidates  so  divided  the 
electoral  vote,  that  the  people  failed  to  elect  a  President,  and 
the  election  devolved  upon  the  House  of  Representatives, 
which  set  aside  the  favorite  of  the  people,  and  chose  Mr. 
Adams. 

For  the  election  of  1828,  no  preliminary  caucus  and  no 
other  system  of  nomination  was  necessary.  There  could  be 
but  two  candidates  :  the  incumbent  of  the  Presidential  chair, 
and  the  popular  soldier  whose  friends  had  industriously  dis- 
seminated the  falsehood,  that  he  had  been  cheated  out  of 
the  Presidency  in  1825. 

General  Jackson  was  elected.  He  received  one  hundred 
and  seventy-eight  electoral  votes,  and  Mr.  Adams  eighty- 
three.  Thus,  the  powerful  Republican  party,  triumphant 
and  united  since  1801,  was  divided,  and  the  two  divisions 
soon  adopted  new  names.  The  party  of  which  Andrew 
Jackson  was  the  idolized  chief  was  called  Democratic,  and 
that  which  looked  up  to  Henry  Clay  as  its  head  took  the 
name  of  Whig. 

General  Jackson,  as  every  one  knows,  brought  into  the 
Presidential  chair  the  passions  which  five  years  of  political 


CANDIDATES   FOB   THE    PRESIDENCY.  435 

strife  had  generated  and  inflamed,  and  the  two  darling 
objects  of  his  policy  were  to  keep  Henry  Clay  out  of,  and 
bring  Martin  Van  Buren  into,  the  Presidency.  Scarcely  one 
important  act  of  his  administration  was  performed  which  had 
not  some  bearing  upon  one  or  the  other  of  these  objects. 
We,  however,  have  only  to  do  with  the  measures  taken  to 
prepare  the  way  for  the  elevation  of  Mr.  Van  Buren. 

General  Jackson,  we  can  positively  assert,  came  to  Wash- 
ington in  1829,  intending  to  serve  but  one  term.  He 
brought  with  him  in  his  pocket  a  paper  of  rules  for  the  con- 
duct of  his  administration ;  which  rules  he  had  read  to  sev- 
eral of  his  friends  in  Tennessee,  and  he  had  pledged  himself 
to  abide  by  them.  One  of  these  rules  was,  that  no  member 
of  his  Cabinet  should  be  a  candidate  for  the  succession. 
The  object  of  this,  as  he  said,  was  to  prevent  a  recurrence 
of  the  intrigues  which  had  taken  place  in  the  Cabinet  of 
"Jim  Monroe,"  as  he  was  wont  to  style  his  old  friend, — 
almost  every  member  of  which  had  been  an  active  candidate 
for  the  succession.  This  famous  rule  was  read  to  the  mem- 
bers of  General  Jackson's  Cabinet,  and  they  all  admitted  its 
reasonableness,  and  promised  a  compliance  with  it.  There 
was,  however,  but  one  member  of  the  Cabinet  of  sufficient 
prominence  to  be  thought  of  as  a  candidate,  and  that  was 
Martin  Van  Buren,  Secretary  of  State.  To  him  alone  the 
rule  could  be  supposed  to  apply. 

Andrew  Jackson  was  not  a  man  to  let  a  slip  of  writing- 
paper  interpose  an  obstacle  to  the  execution  of  his  will,  and 
a  means  was  readily  found  of  removing  Mr.  Van  Buren  from 
the  list  of  the  excluded. 

On  General  Jackson's  inauguration  day,  his  most  intimate 
friends  could  not  have  foretold  which  would  finally  stand 
highest  in  his  regard,  Vice-President  Calhoun  or  Mr.  Van 
Buren.  The  events  which  led  to  the  President's  speedy  and 


436  TEIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

total  estrangement  from  Mr.  Calhoun,  and  which  induced 
him  to  dedicate  himself,  as  it  were,  to  the  elevation  of  Mr. 
Van  Buren,  are  too  well  known  to  be  related  here.  It  suf- 
fices merely  to  remind  the  reader  of  the  fact ;  and  by  that 
fact  the  politics  of  the  United  •  States  were  not  merely 
influenced,  but  controlled,  for  a  period  of  thirty  years. 

The  measures  taken  by  General  Jackson  to  insure  the 
succession  to  Mr.  Van  Buren  shall  now  be  briefly  indicated. 
During  the  first  summer  of  his  Presidency,  the  General  was 
in  such  feeble  health  that  his  friends  concluded  that  he  could 
not  survive  the  term  for  which  he  had  been  elected,  and  it 
occurred  to  one  of  them,  Major  William  B.  Lewis,  that,  if 
the  President  should  die,  Mr.  Calhoun  would  succeed  him, 
and  Mr.  Van  Buren's  prospects  be  ruined.  To  prevent  so 
dire  a  result,  he  induced  the  General  to  write  a  letter,  to  be 
published  in  case  of  his  death,  warmly  commending  Mr. 
Van  Buren,  and  severely  denouncing  Mr.  Calhoun.  This 
letter  contained  the  following  passage  :  — 

"  Permit  me  here  to  say  of  Mr.  Van  Buren,  that  I  have  found 
him  everything  I  could  desire  him  to  be,  and  believe  Mm  to  be, 
not  only  deserving  my  confidence,  but  the  confidence  of  the  nation. 
Instead  of  his  being  selfish  and  intriguing,  as  has  been  represented 
by  some  of  his  opponents,  I  have  ever  found  him  frank,  open, 
candid,  and  manly.  He,  my  dear  friend,  is  well  qualified  to  fill 
the  highest  office  in  the  gift  of  the  people,  who  in  him  will  find-  a 
true  friend  and  safe  depositary  of  their  rights  and  liberties.  I  wish 
I  could  say  as  much  for  Mr.  Calhoun  and  some  of  his  friends." 

The  letter  proceeds,  at  considerable  length,  to  descant 
upon  Mr.  Calhoun  and  his  political  errors.  To  guard  against 
accidents,  a  copy  of  this  letter,  signed  by  the  General's  own 
hand,  was  retained  in  the  secret  archives  of  the  White  House. 
As,  however,  the  event  which  it  contemplated  never  oc- 
curred, the  letter  was  never  used,  and  the  old  friend  of  the 


CANDIDATES   FOR   THE    PEESIDENCT.  437 

President,  to  whom  it  was  addressed,  never  knew  its  real 
object. 

Vice-President  Calhoun  was  too  important  a  character  at 
that  time,  and  had  too  many  claims  upon  the  support  of  his 
party,  to  be  easily  set  aside.  It  was,  therefore,  concluded, 
in  the  secret  counsels  of  the  White  House,  that  General 
Jackson  must  serve  a  second  term,  and  measures  to  this  end 
were  taken  early  in  the  spring  of  the  General's  first  year. 
An  adroit  letter  was  written  in  the  White  House  to  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature,  a  thorough-going 
adherent  of  the  Administration,  which  contained  a  sugges- 
tion that  bore  fruit.  "  I  am  not  authorized  to  say,"  said  the 
author  of  this  epistle,  "that  the  General  would  permit  his 
name  to  be  used  again ;  but,  knowing  him  as  I  do,  I  feel 
confident  that,  if  he  believed  the  interest  of  the  country 
required  it,  and  that  it  was  the' wish  of  the  people  he  should 
serve  another  term,  he  would  not  hesitate  one  moment.  If, 
then,  it  is  the  desire  of  your  State  that  he  should  serve 
another  term,  let  the  members  of  her  Legislature  express  the 
sentiments  of  the  people  upon  that  subject.  Let  it  be  done  in 
such  a  way  as  not  to  make  it  necessary  for  him  to  speak  in 
relation  to  the  matter." 

The  hint  was  promptly  taken.  In  a  few  days,  an  address 
appeared  in  the  designated  newspaper,  requesting  General 
Jackson  to  serve  a  second  term,  and  it  was  signed  by  sixty- 
eight  members  of  the  Legislature.  Similar  tactics  elicited 
similar  addresses  from  the  Legislatures  of  New  York  and 
Ohio ;  so  that,  before  General  Jackson  had  served  fourteen 
months  of  his  first  term,  he  was  brought  forward  conspicu- 
ously, as  the  candidate  of  his  party,  for  a  second.  The 
sweeping  removals  from  office,  and  the  filling  of  all  valuable 
posts  with  unscrupulous  partisans  of  the  Administration, 
made  it  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  for  the  President  to 


438  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

call  forth  expressions  of  opinion  in  favor  of  any  man  or  any 
measure. 

'  Mr.  Calhoun,  who  was  no  match  for  the  President  and  his 
Kitchen  Cabinet  in  political  craft,  was  continually  giving 
them  advantages  over  him.  He  thought  to  injure  Andrew 
Jackson's  popularity  by  publishing  his  hostile  correspon- 
dence with  the  President,  forgetting  that  the  President  con- 
trolled the  Democratic  press  of  the  country,  and  could  thus 
give  to  the  party  his  own  interpretation  of  that  correspon- 
dence. Jackson  accepted  the  defiance,  and  promptly  dis- 
missed from  his  Cabinet  the  three  members  of  it  who 
regarded  the  Vice-President  as  their  political  chief,  and 
appointed  in  their  place  three  of  his  own  friends.  It  was 
thought  to  be  necessary,  also,  for  Mr.  Van  Buren  to  with- 
draw from  the  Cabinet,  and  thus  escape  the  operation  of  the 
rule,  which  excluded  Cabinet  ministers  for  the  succession. 
His  resignation  was  accepted,  and,  to  remove  him  for  a  time 
from  the  scene  of  political  strife,  he  was  sent  as  Minister  to 
England. 

Then  the  Yice-President  blundered  again.  Allying  himself 
for  the  moment  with  Whig  Senators,  he  formed  a  combination 
powerful  enough  to  reject  the  nomination  of  Mr.  Van  Buren, 
who  was  thus  compelled  to  return  from  England  after  hold- 
ing the  post  of  Minister  for  a  few  months.  Mr.  Calhoun 
was  convinced  that  such  an  emphatic  censure,  by  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States,  would  lay  his  rival  prostrate  forever. 
He  was  overheard  to  say  to  one  of  his  friends  :  "  It  will  kill 
him,  sir,  kill  him  dead.  He  will  never  kick,  sir,  never 
kick."  Seldom  has  a  man  been  more  mistaken.  The  Dem- 
ocratic party  welcomed  Van  Buren's  return  as  they  would 
have  welcomed  a  conqueror,  and  General  Jackson  instantly 
set  on  foot  measures  to  make  the  rejected  minister  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States. 


CANDIDATES   FOE  THE  PRESIDENCY.  439 

There  was  a  difficulty  in  the  way,  which  much  perplexed 
the  White  House  managers,  and  the  solution  of  which  has 
had  important  and  lasting  consequences.  How  should  Mr. 
Van  Buren  be  nominated  for  the  Vice-Presidency  ?  Other 
gentlemen  had  their  eyes  upon  the  post,  and  Martin  Van 
Buren  had  not  the  national  reputation  which  could  call  forth 
a  spontaneous  and  universal  nomination.  It  was,  also, 
highly  important  that  this  nomination  should  appear  spon- 
taneous, and,  especially,  that  the  President's  hand  should 
not  be  seen  in  it.  It  was  Major  William  B.  Lewis,  the 
President's  most  confidential  friend,  and  an  inmate  of  the 
White  House,  who  suggested  the  solution  of  the  problem. 
In  a  letter  to  Amos  Kendal,  of  May,  1831,  he  reviewed  the 
situation,  and  the  claims  of  the  several  candidates,  and  added 
the  following  words  :  — 7 

"  Surrounded  by  so  many  difficulties  as  the  case  is,  and  taking 
everything  into  consideration,  many  of  our  friends  (and  the  most 
judicious  of  them)  think  it  would  be  best  for  the  Republican  mem- 
bers of  the  respective  Legislatures  to  propose  to  the  people  to  elect 
delegates  to  a  NATIONAL  CONVENTION,  to  be  holden  for  that 
purpose  at  Harrisburg,  or  some  other  place,  about  the*  middle  of 
next  May.  That  point  is  preferred,  to  prevent  an  improper  inter- 
ference by  members  of  Congress,  who,  about  that  time  will  leave 
this  city  for  their  respective  homes.  If  the  Legislature  of  New 
Hampshire  will  propose  this,  I  think  it  will  be  followed  up  by 
others,  and  have  the  effect,  no  doubt,  of  putting  a  stop  to  partial 
nominations.  You  had  better  reflect  upon  this  proposition,  and, 
if  you  think  with  me,  make  the  suggestion  to  our  friend  Hill  (one 
of  the  Senators  from  New  Hampshire)." 

This  ingenious  proposition  was  approved  by  Mr.  Kendal 
and  Mr.  Hill.  The  docile  legislators  of  the  Granite  State, 
to  the  number  of  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine,  immediately 
met  in  caucus,  and  adopted  the  plan  which  Major  Lewis  had 

28 


440  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

suggested.  The  "  Globe "  seconded  the  proposal  for  a 
National  Convention ;  other  Legislatures  sanctioned  it ;  and 
due  care  was  taken,  by  the  friends  of  the  Administration, 
that  the  right  delegates  should  attend  it.  The  Convention 
met  at  Baltimore,  in  May,  1832,  and  it  consisted  of  three 
hundred  and  twenty-six  delegates.  Leading  members,  who 
were  disinclined  to  vote  for  Mr.  Van  Buren,  were  given  dis- 
tinctly to  understand,  that  they  must  vote  for  the  President's 
candidate,  or  be  prepared  to  quarrel  with  the  President. 
Such  was  the  power  of  the  Administration,  and  such  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  party,  that,  out  of  the  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
six  delegates,  only  sixty-six  presumed  to  give  a  vote  against 
Martin  Van  Buren,  — just  enough  to  impart  to  the  delibera- 
tions of  the  Convention  a  slight  show  of  independence.  The 
people,  however,  were  not  quite  so  obedient  to  the  mandates 
of  a  party  chief.  General  Jackson  received  two  hundred 
and  nineteen  electoral  votes  in  1832,  while  Mr.  Van  Buren 
received  but  one  hundred  and  eighty-nine  ;  which,  however, 
was  forty-four  more  than  he  needed. 

Thus  was  inaugurated  the  system  of  -nominating  candi- 
dates by  National  Convention,  which  has  continued  to  the 
present  time.  State  nominating  Conventions  had  been  fre- 
quently held ;  and,  when  railroads  were  about  to  make  all 
parts  of  the  country  easily  accessible,  the  system  properly 
and  naturally  became  National. 

The  plan  is  open  to  objections,  as  every  plan  would  be ; 
but  it  is  probably  the  fairest  and  best  which  the  case  admits. 
The  great  objection  to  the  system  does  not  exist  in  the  sys- 
tem itself,  but  in  the  overshadowing  influence  of  an  Adminis- 
tration, through  its  control  of  the  office-holders.  So  long  as 
the  President  possesses  an  unlimited  power  of  removal,  a 
nominating  Convention  consists,  necessarily,  either  of  men 
in  office  who  desire  to  keep  their  offices,  or  of  men  out  of 


CANDIDATES   FOR   THE    PRESIDENCY.  441 

office,  who  desire  to  have  office.  No  Convention  for  the 
nomination  of  Presidential  candidates  has  ever  yet  been  held, 
which  did  not  chiefly  consist,  either  of  office-holders  or 
office-seekers.  The  Convention,  for  example,  which  nomi- 
nated Mr.  Van  Burenfor  the  Presidency  in  1836,  was  almost 
entirely  composed  of  men  pledged  to  his  support,  and  whose 
defection  would  have  been  instantly  visited  by  their  dismis- 
sal from  valuable  posts,  or  the  dismissal  of  their  friends.  It 
was  in  no  sense  a  deliberative  body.  No  choice  was  given 
it.  No  regiment  of  the  army  could  feel  itself  more  bound  to 
obey  the  orders  of  its  colonel,  than  this  Convention  felt  itself 
bound  to  comply  with  the  known  desires  of  the  President. 
It  is  well  for  the  people  to  understand  this.  A  President 
who  remains  united  with  the  party  that  elected  him,  and  who 
has  an  unlimited  power  of  removal  from  office,  is  in  a  posi- 
tion to  dictate  to  the  Convention  of  his  party  the  man  it  shall 
nominate.  But  he  ought  not  to  have  an  unlimited  power  of 
removal. 


THE  ORIGINATOR  OF  ODB 

INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENT  SYSTEM, 

AND  WHAT  HB  TRIED  TO  ACCOMPLISH. 


IT  was  not  De  Witt  Clinton  who  began  the  great  work  of 
making  the  Western  Continent,  in  all  its  parts,  accessible. 
The  father  of  our  American  system  of  internal  improvement 
was  George  Washington,  planter,  of  Virginia.  The  splendor 
of  his  fame  as  patriot,  warrior,  and  statesman  obscures  in 
some  degree  the  homelier  merits  of  the  citizen  and  the 
pioneer.  His  public  life,  however,  was  only  incidental ;  it 
was  forced  upon  him,  not  sought;  endured,  not  enjoyed. 
At  the  head-quarters  of  the  army,  and  still  more  at  the  seat 
of  government,  he  led  a  glorious  life,  it  is  true,  but  a  con- 
strained, unnatural  one,  ever  anxious,  to  use  his  own  admir- 
able and  touching  words,  "to  collect  his  duty  from  a  just 
appreciation  of  every  circumstance  by  which  it  might  be 
affected."  This  noble  solicitude  made  him  seem,  to  the 
slighter  men  around  him,  slow  and  over-cautious.  He  who 
would  know  the  man  aright,  the  true  George  Washington, 
must  see  him  on  one  of  his  own  excellent  horses,  following 
up,  with  a  party  of  hunters  and  half-breeds,  the  head- waters 
of  the  James  or  the  Potomac  piercing  the  Alleghanies,  and 
roaming  the  wilderness  beyond  in  search  of  branches  of  the 
Ohio,  by  which  the  commerce  of  the  Western  rivers  and 
lakes  could  find  its  way  to  the  rivers  of  Virginia.  Here  he 
was  at  home.  Here  his  glance  was  bold  and  free.  Here  he 
appeared,  what  he  really  was,  a  leader  of  his  generation,  and 


444  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

showed  that  his  preeminence  in  Virginia  was  not  due  merely 
to  the  accident  of  his  possessing  a  great  fortune,  but  to  the 
cast  and  breadth  of  his  mind,  which  was  truly  continental. 
He,  first  of  all  men,  was  fully  possessed  of  that  American 
spirit  which  has  just  brought  the  two  oceans  within  a  hundred 
and  fifty  hours  of  one  another.  He  was  the  forerunner  of 
De  Witt  Clinton,  as  of  the  men  who  have  since  created  Chi- 
cago, St.  Louis,  Cincinnati,  San  Francisco,  Duluth. 

The  broad  Potomac,  which  swept  by  his  own  front-door, 
he  had  personally  traced  to  its  sources  in  the  Alleghanies, 
examined  its  falls  and  obstructions,  and  sought  out  the 
branch  of  the  Ohio  nearest  Lake  Erie ;  musing,  meanwhile, 
upon  the  best  modes  of  creating,  out  of  these  materials,  the 
great  national  highway  between-  the  ocean  and  the  waters 
of  the  West.  How  intent  he  was  upon  this  scheme,  how 
clearly  he  saw  its  advantages,  we  discover  in  the  length  and 
particularity  of  his  correspondence  on  the  subject  with  Jef- 
ferson and  other  Virginia  friends.  For  that  day,  however, 
it  was  too  much  for  Virginia  to  attempt,  and  Washington 
fixed  upon  the  improvement  of  the  navigation  of  the  James 
as  the  nearest  approach  to  a  realization  of  his  plan  then  pos- 
sible. A  canal  seven  miles  long  round  the  falls  at  Eichmond 
adds  two  hundred  and  twenty  miles  to  the  barge  navigation 
of  the  river,  and  makes  a  water  highway  to  the  mountains. 
Companies  were  formed  at  Richmond  for  the  improvement 
of  both  rivers,  and  a  grateful  legislature  presented  to  Gen- 
eral Washington,  as  the  originator  of  both  schemes,  fifty 
hundred-pound  shares  in  the  Potomac  Company,  and  a  hun- 
dred hundred-dollar  shares  in  the  James  River  Company. 
He  declined  both  gifts,  of  course  ;  but  in  his  will  he  distinctly 
claims  to  have  "  suggested  the  vast  advantages  which  Virginia 
would  derive  from  the  extension  of  its  inland  navigation  under 
legislative  patronage." 


INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENT  SYSTEM.          445 

He  not  only  suggested  the  scheme,  but  he  felt  for  it  the 
warm  affection  which  men  cherish  for  the  children  of  their 
brain.  To  bring  the  commerce  of  the  western  country  to  the 
ocean  by  the  shortest  cut  and  easiest  grades,  —  namely, 
across  Virginia  to  the  waters  of  the  Chesapeake,  —  this  was 
Washington's  conception;  and  it  was  the  first  American 
scheme  of  the  kind  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge.  On 
various  errands  in  furtherance  of  the  general  plan  Washing- 
ton crossed  the  mountains  as  many  as  five  times. 

There  are  readers  who  have  heard  the  late  venerable 
Albert  Gallatin  describe  the  interview  which,  when  a  young 
man,  he  chanced  to  witness  in  the  heart  of  the  Alleghauies. 
General  Washington  and  a  number  of  trappers  and  pioneers 
had  met  with  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  best  practicable 
gap  in  the  mountains  for  the  road  between  the  two  water 
systems.  The  idea  of  tunnelling  the  mountains,  and  lifting 
a  canal-boat  two  thousand  feet  into  the  air,  and  letting  it 
softly  down  on  the  Ohio  slope,  had  not  yet  entered  the  most 
daring  mind.  Washington  took  for  granted  the  necessity 
of  a  "  carrying  place,"  and  he  desired  to  discover  the  happy 
medium  between  the  shortest  and  the  easiest.  Old  woods- 
man as  he  was,  he  knew  that  the  deer  and  the  buffalo  are  the 
first  explorers  of  the  wilderness,  and  that  it  is  the  hunter  who 
first  becomes  acquainted  with  the  Reports  of  those  four- 
footed  engineers.  So  he  invited  the  hunters  and  settlers  to 
meet  him  at  a  log-hut  in  the  mountains,  a  "  land-office  "  con- 
sisting of  one  room  fourteen  feet  square,  containing  a  bed,  a 
small  pine  table,  and  a  wooden  bench.  The  General,  upon 
his  arrival  with  his  nephew,  took  his  seat  at  the  table,  and 
the  hunters  crowded  into  the  cabin  and  stood  around  the 
table,  a  few  finding  an  advantageous  place  upon  the  land 
agent's  bed.  Young  Gallatin  was  in  the  front  of  the  leather- 
stockinged  group,  near  the  central  figure.  Pen  in  hand,  the 


446  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Father  of  his  Country  questioned  each  pioneer  in  turn,  and 
recorded  the  substance  of  his  replies.  When  all  had  spoken, 
the  young  gentleman  from  Switzerland  fancied  he  saw  the 
path  of  which  the  General  was  in  search.  Washington  still 
hesitating,  Gallatin  broke  in  with  rash  and  reckless  words  : 
"O,  it  is  plain  enough ;  that  is  evidently  the  most  practicable 
place."  All  the  company  stared,  astonished  at  so  gross  3 
breach  of  politeness  in  a  youth  towards  the  most  illustrious 
ol  living  men.  The  General  laid  down  his  pen,  and  cast  a 
reproachful  look  at  the  culprit ;  but,  resuming  his  inquiries, 
he  soon  made  up  his  mind,  and  turning  to  the  intruder  said, 
as  he  again  put  down  his  pen,  "  You  are  right,  sir."  Thu» 
was  established  the  road  through  the  Alleghanies,  which  has 
been  used  ever  since  as  a  highway,  and  will  be  used  forever. 
w  It  was  always  so,"  Mr.  Gallatin  would  say,  "  with  General 
Washington ;  he  was  slow  in  forming  an  opinion,  and  never 
decided  till  he  knew  he  was  right."  That  night  the  General 
slept  upon  the  bed ;  while  his  nephew,  the  agent,  and  Galla- 
tin lay  upon  the  floor  wrapped  in  buffalo-skins. 

General  Washington  did  not  live  to  see  his  project  exe- 
cuted ;  nor  has  it  yet  been  executed.  Not  a  bushel  of  corn 
from  the  Western  country  reaches  the  ocean  by  way  of  Vir- 
ginia; and  if  a  ton  of  coal  from  the  head-waters  of  the 
Kanawha  occasionally  gets  to  Richmond,  it  is  carried  down 
the  Kanawha  to  the  Ohio  ninety  miles,  down  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and 'so  round  by  the  ocean 
to  the  James  River,  —  a  circuit  of  four  thousand  miles.  All 
this  swoop  of  travel,  because  Washington's  scheme  wants 
the  finishing  touch,  the  last  hundred  miles  or  so  of  easy 
road-making ! 

And  yet,  from  the  day  when  the  General  had  his  confer- 
ence with  the  hunters  to  the  present  hour,  Virginia  has  been 
trying  to  accomplish  it, — trying  hard,  too,  and  spending 


INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENT  SYSTEM.          447 

money  more  freely  than  could  have  been  expected.     Tho 
old  James  Kiver  Company,  founded  by  Washington,  made 
that  seven-mile  canal  round  the  falls  near  Richmond,  and 
cleared  the  river  of  obstructions  as  far  back  as  Buchanan,  in 
Botecourt   County,    where    the    Blue   Eidge   interposes   a 
barrier.     It  was  a  long  stride  toward  the   Kanawha    (the 
nearest  navigable  branch  of  the  Ohio) ,  and  it  was  a  priceless 
good  to  Virginia.     Then,  in   1823,  a  second  James  River 
Company,  succeeding  to  the  rights  of  the  first,  improved  all 
that  the  first  had  done,  and  added  several  important  works 
of  its  own.     First,  it  constructed  a  canal  through  the  moun- 
tains, seven  miles  and  a  half  long,  which  enabled  boats  to 
get  as  far  west  as  Covington,  which  is  two  hundred  and  five 
miles  from  Richmond.     Next,  it  made  a  pretty  good  turn- 
pike road  from  Covington  to  the  Ohio,  at  the  point  where 
the  Big  Sandy   enters  it,  a  distance  of  two  hundred  and 
eighty  miles.     Lastly,  it  improved  the   navigation   of  the 
Kanawha  by  dams  and  sluices,    so  that  steamboats   could 
more  easily  ascend   it,  and   bring   passengers  sixty  miles 
nearer  Covington  before  taking  to  the  road.     This  was  more 
than  a  boon  to  Virginia ;  it  was  a  national  good ;  it  was  an 
approximation  to  Washington's  idea.     Henry  Clay,  when  he 
was  getting  into  the  vale  of  years,  found  this  way  of  travel- 
ling to  Washington  much  more  agreeable  than  a  six  weeks' 
horseback  ride,  with  the  chance  of  drowning  at  the  swollen 
fords  of  so  many  mountain  streams.     They  still  point  out, 
along  the  line  of  the  Covington  Turnpike,  the  houses  where 
he  and  his  merry  party  used  to  halt  for  the  night,  and  spend 
a  long  evening  at  whist. 

But  the  age  of  turnpikes  passed.  In  1835,  when  the  Erie 
Canal  was  pouring  the  wealth  of  the  great  West  into  New 
York,  Virginia,  always  believing  that  she  possessed  the  true 
pathway,  prepared  for  a  supreme  effort.  The  James  River 


448  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  Kanawha  Company  was  chartered, — the  State  being 
the  chief  stockholder,  —  and  Virginia  set  about  constructing 
a  canal  between  the  two  rivers,  the  plan  of  which  included  a 
nine-mile  tunnel  through  the  Alleghanies  at  an  elevation  of 
seventeen  hundred  feet.  Upon  this  work  Virginia  has  been 
fitfully  toiling  ever  since.  Eleven  millions  of  dollars  have 
been  spent  upon  it,  and  it  will  cost  forty  millions  more  to 
complete  it.  It  could  be  finished  in  four  years,  ^the  forty 
millions  were  forthcoming ;  but  there  is  no  immediate  pros- 
pect of  Virginia's  having  such  a  sum  at  her  disposal. 

Probably  the  means  could  have  been  found  for  the  execu- 
tion of  the  project,  if,  in  its  infancy,  a  new  mode  of  trans- 
portation had  not  been  introduced,  which  proved  more 
attractive  to  capital.  Within  a  year  after  the  formation  of 
the  Canal  Company,  the  State  began  to  push  a  railroad  west- 
ward, —  that  is  to  say,  a  railroad  company  was  formed,  and 
the  State,  according  to  its  ancient  custom,  subscribed  for 
three  fifths  of  the  stock.  Forty-four  years  having  elapsed, 
we  find  that  it  is  the  railroad,  not  the  canal,  that  will  realize 
Washington's  dream ;  for  the  railroad  has  overcome  its 
worst  obstacles,  and  is  going  on  to  speedy  completion.  By 
various  companies,  under  different  charters,  the  State  had 
constructed  a  railroad  from  Richmond  to  the  mountains, 
nearly  two  hundred  miles,  and  expended  three  millions  and 
a  quarter  in  preparing  for  the  laying  of  the  rails  beyond  the 
mountains,  when  the  war  broke  out,  compelling  us  all  to 
devote  our  energies  and  our  means  to  the  work  of  destruc- 
tion. The  Alleghanies  had  been  tunnelled  at  eight  places. 
One  tunnel  a  mile  long,  and  seven  shorter  tunnels,  had  been 
finished,  or  nearly  finished.  The  heavy  embankments  and 
deep  excavations  requisite  in  the  mountain  region  were 
either  done  or  were  in  an  advanced  stage  of  forwardness, 
and  trains  were  running  to  a  station  within  ten  miles  of 


INTERNAL   IMPROVEMENT    SYSTEM.  449 

Covington.  Then  all  constructive  works  were  brought  to  a 
stand-still,  while  we  fought  to  undo  the  mistakes  of  men 
who  died  two  hundred  years  before  any  of  us  were  born. 

When  the  war  ended,  Virginia  was  so  torn,  impoverished, 
and  desolate,  that  if  this  road  could  have  been  finished  by 
waving  a  wand  over  the  incomplete  parts,  she  could  scarcely 
have  lifted  an  arm  for  the  purpose.  In  1866,  the  two  com- 
panies which  had  executed  the  work  so  far  —  one  the  part 
east  of  the  mountains,  and  the  other  the  part  west  —  were 
consolidated  into  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Railroad  Com- 
pany. But  three  fifths  of  the  stock  of  these  companies  had 
been  the  property  of  Virginia,  and  the  Virginia  which  had 
subscribed  so  liberally  had  ceased  to  exist.  There  were 
two  Virginias  in  1866,  each  having  rights  in  these  works, 
but  neither  able  to  complete  them.  Both  legislatures,  how- 
ever, comprehended  the  situation.  Both  knew  that,  unas- 
sisted, they  could  not  finish  the  road,  and  that  its  prompt 
completion  was  the  supreme  interest  of  both.  Hence,  they 
agreed  to  surrender  their  rights  to  the  new  company,  on 
condition  that  it  should  go  forward  and  perform  the  work. 
In  other  words,  they  said  to  capitalists  :  "  Here  you  see  two 
hundred  miles  of  war-worn,  battered  railroad-track;  like- 
wise, a  dozen  tunnels,  finished  and  unfinished ;  also,  a  great 
many  miles  of  embankment  and  excavation,  unharmed  by 
war  and  weather ;  and  a  large  number  of  bridges,  more  or 
less  sound :  take  all  this  property,  on  the  simple  condition 
of  converting  and  completing  it  into  a  substantial  railroad, 
that  shall  connect  the  James  with  the  Ohio,  and  open  a  new 
highway  between  the  ocean  and  the  great  West." 

It  was  a  difficult  task  to  undertake  in  the  second  year  of 
peace,  with  a  Pacific  Railroad  clamoring  for  money  in  every 
county,  and  the  debt  system  still  in  debate.  Nevertheless, 


450  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

Wall  Street,  after  due  hesitation,  accepted  the  offer.  The 
Empire  State  of  the  nineteenth  century  joined  hands  with 
the  Empire  State  of  the  eighteenth,  and  we  may  expect  with 
confidence  that  before  long  Washington's  project  will  be 
executed. 


POCAHONTAS   AND  HER  HUSBAND. 
THE  UNEOMANTIC  TKUTH. 


HAVING  duly  celebrated  various  triumphant  exertions  of 
human  ingenuity,  let  me  now  relate  one  instance  of  success- 
ful imposture.  But  it  will  oblige  us  to  bid  farewell  to  our 
childhood's  Pocahontas.  Dusky  maiden,  heroine  of  Captain 
John  Smith's  romantic  story,  farewell  forever ! 

It  is  strange  we  should  have  believed  this  pleasing  fiction 
so  long ;  for  the  other  incredible  tales  of  the  same  author 
ought  to  have  put  us  upon  our  guard.  He  describes  Pow- 
hatan,  for  example,  as  living  in  great  state,  like  an  "  empe- 
ror," who  gave  audience  to  Captain  Newport,  with  twenty 
women  on  each  side  of  the  room,  and  a  guard  of  four  or  five 
hundred  men  around  the  house ;  while  on  each  side  of  the 
door  stood  forty  platters  of  "  fine  bread."  John  Smith  knew 
the  Indians  better  than  that.  He  knew  very  well  that  a 
people  without  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  or  swine,  with  little 
cleared  land,  and  only  two  or  three  rude  implements,  could 
never  maintain  an  imperial  court  and  retinue  in  that  style. 

It  seems  to  have  been  a  habit  of  this  adventurer  to  attri- 
bute his  deliverance  from  peril  to  the  friendship  and  inter- 
cession of  beautiful  damsels.  In  Turkey  he  won  the  tender 
love  of  the  lovely  Tragabigzanda,  who  gave  him  substantial 
aid  in  his  time  of  trouble.  At  another  place,  it  was  the 
noble  Lady  Callamata  who  "  largely  supplied  all  his  wants." 
But  let  him  speak  for  himself.  In  the  dedication  of  his 


452  TKIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

History  of  Virginia  to  the  Duchess  of  Eichmond,  he  holds 
the  following  language  :  — 

"  My  comfort  is,  that  heretofore  honorable  and  virtuous  ladies, 
and  comparable  but  amongst  themselves,  have  offered  me  rescue 
and  protection  in  my  greatest  danger.  Even  in  foreign  parts  I 
have  felt  relief  from  that  sex.  The  beauteous  lady  Tragabigzanda, 
when  I  was  a  slave  to  the  Turks,  did  all  she  could  to  secure  me. 
When  I  overcame  the  bashaw  of  Nalbritz  in  Tartaria,  the  charita- 
ble Lady  Callamata  supplied  my  necessities.  In  the  utmost  of 
many  extremities,  that  blessed  Pocahontas,  the  great  King's 
daughter  of  Virginia,  oft  saved  my  life.  When  I  escaped  the  cru- 
elties of  pirates  and  most  furious  storms,  a  long  time  alone  in  a 
small  boat  at  sea,  and  driven  ashore  in  France,  the  good  Lady, 
Madam  Chanoies,  bountifully  assisted  me.  And  so  verily  these 
my  adventures  have  tasted  the  same  influence  from  your  gracious 
hand." 

Then  he  never  tells  his  story  twice  alike.  In  one  of  his 
versions,  Pocahontas  is  spoken  of  as  "  a  child  of  tenne  "  ;  in 
another,  as  a  maiden  of  twelve  or  thirteen ;  and  in  the 
passage  just  quoted,  he  goes  beyond  previous  statements  in 
saying  that  she  oft  saved  his  life.  But  the  most  remarkable 
discrepancy,  and  the  one  that  led  to  the  detection  of  the 
braggart,  remains  to  be  told.  In  the  year  1608,  a  few  weeks 
after  his  return  to  Jamestown  from  his  residence  with  Pow- 
hatan,  he  wrote  a  long  letter  home,  in  which  he  gave  an 
account  of  the  manner  in  which  he  was  taken  prisoner,  and 
of  what  transpired  during  the  month  of  his  detention  among 
the  Indians.  In  this  letter  there  is  no  allusion  to  Pocahon- 
tas ;  he  does  not  mention  her  name ;  nor  does  he  relate  any 
story  at  all  resembling  the  one  with  which  we  are -all  so 
familiar.  On  the  contrary,  he  assures  us  that  Powhatan 
treated  him  with  the  most  bountiful  generosity,  and  he 
speaks  of  him  as  "  this  kind  king." 


POCAHONTAS   AND   HEE   HUSBAND.  453 

Wingfield,  President  of  the  colony,  was  in  the  habit  of 
recording  in  his  diary  everything  of  interest  that  occurred 
in  Virginia.  He  mentions  the  fact  of  Smith's  imprisonment 
and  safe  return,  but  says  nothing  whatever  of  an  Indian 
maiden  having  saved  his  life.  In  short,  of  the  events  which 
occurred  in  Virginia  during  the  first  ten  years  of  the  col- 
ony's existence,  we  have  seven  distinct  sources  of  informa- 
tion, all  but  one  of  which  are  the  productions  of  men  who 
had  lived  in  the  colony ;  but  in  none  of  them  is  there  an 
intimation  that  Pocahontas  saved  the  life  of  Captain  Smith. 
Two  of  these  narratives  contain  several  particulars  of  the  life 
and  death  of  this  Indian  girl,  and  the  authors  of  them  had  a 
strong  interest  in  exalting  her  reputation. 

The  reader,  if  he  knows  anything  of  the  Indian  character, 
is  aware  that  nothing  is  more  unlikely  than  that  an  Indian 
chief  should  be  diverted  from  his  purpose  by  the  entreaties 
of  a  little,  girl ;  and  that  Indian  children,  so  far  from  being 
disposed  to  intercede  for  a  prisoner,  enjoyed  the  execution 
and  torture  of  captives  as  our  children  do  the  circus  and  the 
Fourth  of  July. 

I  say,  then,  farewell  the  Pocahontas  of  romance !  and 
approach  the  true  Pocahontas,  the  dumpy,  dingy  little  squaw 
whom  John  Eolfe  married,  and  the  council  sent  to  England 
to  advertise  forlorn  Virginia  ! 

Pocahontas  was  born  in  the  year  1598.  Her  father  Pow- 
hatan,  by  reason  of  his  age  and  former  prowess,  was  the 
principal  chief  of  the  tribe  of  Indians  inhabiting  the  region 
about  the  falls  of  the  James,  —  a  tribe  that  may  have  num- 
bered three  hundred  warriors,  and  was  connected  by  inter- 
marriage and  alliance  with  tribes  living  upon  the  Potomac 
and  other  rivers  flowing  into  the  Chesapeake.  We  get  our 
first  glimpse  of  Pocahontas  when  she  was  a  naked  girl  of 
twelve,  who  used  to  visit  Jamestown  and  play  about  the 


454  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

peninsula  with  the  white  boys.  William  Strachey,  secretary 
of  the  colony,  and  one  of  its  first  historians,  describes  her  as 
he  first  saw  her  in  1610  :  — 

"  The  younger  Indian  women  goe  not  shadowed  (clad)  amongst 
their  owne  companie  until  they  be  nigh  eleaven  or  twelve  returnes 
of  the  leafe  old  (for  so  they  accompt  and  bring  about  the  yeare, 
calling  the  fall  of  the  leafe  taquitock)  ;  nor  are  they  much  ashamed 
thereof;  and  therefore  would  the  before  remembered  Pochahuntas 
a  well-featured  but  wanton  young  girle,  Powhatan's  daughter, 
sometymes  resorting  to  our  fort,  of  the  age  then  of  eleaven  or  twelve 
yeares,  get  the  boyes  forth  with  her  into  the  markett  place,  and 
make  them  wheele,  falling  on  with  their  hands,  turning  up  their 
heeles  upwards,  whome  she  would  follow  and  wheele  so  herself, 
naked  as  she  was,  all  the  fort  over." 

This,  then,  is  her  first  appearance  in  the  history  of  Vir- 
ginia, —  a  wanton  young  girl,  naked,  wheeling  and  wheeled 
about  the  market-place  at  Jamestown !  Three  years  passed, 
during  part  of  which,  it  is  intimated  by  one  of  the  early 
chroniclers,  she  lived  with  one  of  the  settlers  as  his  mistress. 
Powhatan  becoming  actively  hostile  to  the  whites  she  left 
them,  and  went  to  reside  for  a  while  with  a  chief  and  his 
wife,  whose  village  was  situated  on  the  shores  of  the  river 
Potomac.  She  was  living  there  in  the  spring  of  1613  ;  but 
the  place  of  her  retreat  was  unknown  to  the  English. 

One  Captain  Argol,  a  noted  man  in  the  early  days  of  Vir- 
ginia, was  despatched  that  season  for  the  third  time,  in  the 
vessel  which  he  commanded,  to  trade  with  the  Potomac 
Indians  for  corn ;  and  while  he  lay  anchored  in  their  river, 
he  heard  that  Pocahontas  was  living  near,  in  the  village  of  the 
very  chief  with  whom  he  was  most  intimate.  Japazaws  was 
the  name  of  this  potentate.  He  had  had  many  a  bauble 
from  Captain  Argol  in  exchange  for  corn,  and  was  accus- 


POCAHONTAS  AND  HER  HUSBAND.          455 

tomed  to  style  the  Captain  his  brother.  At  this  time  Pow- 
hatan  had  eight  white  captives,  and  Captain  Argol  conceived 
that  by  getting  Pocahontas  into  his  possession,  he  could 
induce  her  father  to  give  them  up  in  exchange  for  her.  He 
enlisted  Japazaws  in  the  scheme,  promising  to  give  him  a 
copper  kettle  if  he  would  lure  Pocahontas  on  board  his 
ship.  The  temptation  was  too  much  for  the  Indian.  His 
wife,  too,  gave  way  at  the  prospect  of  such  an  addition  to  her 
household  treasures,  and  promised  her  assistance. 

So,  on  a  certain  day  the  chief  and  his  wife,  accompanied 
by  Pocahontas,  strolled  down  to  the  river's  bank  to  see  the 
ship ;  and  while  there  the  wife  was  seized  with  a  longing  to 
goon  board.  Her  husband  objected.  She  persisted,  saying 
that  this  was  the  third  timfi  the  vessel  had  been  in  their 
river,  and  yet  she  had  never  visited  it.  The  chief  still 
refusing,  she  resorted  to  the  expedient  employed  by  lovely 
woman,  in  all  ages  and  climes,  to  subdue  the  obstinacy  of 
man :  she  began  to  cry.  Then  her  husband,  as  husbands 
generally  do,  relented;  and  when  Pocahontas  joined  her 
entreaties,  the  chief  launched  his  canoe  and  took  the  ladies 
on  board.  The  treacherous  couple  returned  to  the  shore 
rejoicing  over  their  copper  kettle,  but  Pocahontas  was  a 
prisoner. 

Arrived  at  Jamestown,  she  was  kept  as  a  hostage  while 
the  Governor  negotiated  the  exchange,  and  during  her  stay 
she  caught  the  fancy  of  one  of  the  early  settlers,  styled  in 
the  list  of  passengers,  "John  Rolfe,  gentleman."  I  think  he 
really  liked  the  girl.  We  have  a  very  long  and  very  sancti- 
monious letter  of  his,  in  which  he  declares  that  his  motive 
in  desiring  to  marry  her  was,  to  promote  the  welfare  of  the 
colony,  and  the  conversion  of  the  heathen.  He  says  this  at 
such  length,  and  in  such  pious  phraseology,  that  we  are  jus- 
tified in  disbelieving  him.  It  was  evidently  his  cue  to  exalt 

29 


456  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Pocahontas,  but  there  is  no  hint  in  his  letter  of  her  saving 
John  Smith's  life  six  years  before.  The  Governor  and 
Council  consenting,  and  Pochontas  having  been  baptized, 
the  marriage  was  solemnized  in  1613. 

Powhatan  was  conciliated.  He  gave  up  his  prisoners,  and 
much  of  his  plunder.  He  remained  the  friend  and  ally  of  the 
whites  as  long  as  he  lived. 

For  three  years  John  Eolfe  and  his  wife  Rebecca — nee 
Pocahontas —  lived  together  in  Jamestown.  A  son  was  born 
to  them.  In  1616,  when  Sir  Thomas  Dale  was  going  home 
to  see  his  friends,  it  occurred  to  the  Council  to  send  with 
him,  at  the  expense  of  the  colony,  this  interesting  family, 
as  a  kind  of  first  fruit  of  missionary  success.  The  colony 
was  in  ill  repute  in  England,1  needed  friends  there,  and 
they  thought  Pocahontas  and  her  child  would  advertise 
poor  Virginia  effectively. 

The  family  reached  England,  where  Captain  John  Smith 
was  still  living.  Then  it  was  —  eight  years  after  his  resi- 
dence with  Powhatan  —  that  he  first  told  the  famous  tale  of 
his  rescue  by  Pocahontas  from  a  violent  death.  Doubtless 
he  told  it  to  help  the  advertising  scheme,  and  to  excuse  his 
old  friend  Rolfe  for  marrying  an  Indian  girl.  He  had  prob- 
ably been  reading  a  tract,  published  in  London  in  1609, 
concerning  De  Soto's  exploits  in  Florida,  in  which  there  is 
an  account  given  of  the  Spaniard,  John  Ortiz,  falling  into  the 
hands  of  the  savages,  who  bound  him  to  stakes,  and  were 
about  to  burn  him,  when  a  daughter  of  the  chief  interceded 
for  him  and  saved  his  life.  The  ingenious  Smith  improved 
upon  this  simple  tale.  He  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Queen  of 
England,  recommending  the  "  Virginia  Princess "  to  her 
majesty,  in  which  he  used  the  following  language  :  — 

"  After  some  six  weeks'  fatting  amongst  those  savage  courtiers, 
at  the  minute  of  my  execution,  shejiazarded  the  beating  out  of  her 


POCAHONTAS   AIO)  HER  HUSBAND.  457 

own  brains  to  save  mine ;  and  not  only  that,  but  so  prevailed  with 
her  father  that  I  was  safely  conducted  to  Jamestown." 

The  trick  succeeded  to  admiration.  Pocahontas  became 
the  lion  of  the  London  season.  The  king  and  queen  received 
her  at  court  with  gracious  civility ;  the  bishop  of  London 
gave  her  a  banquet ;  and  King  James  consulted  his  council 
upon  the  question,  whether  Rolfe  had  not  committed  a  grave 
offence  in  marrying  a  princess  of  an  imperial  house  !  After 
a  year's  stay  in  England,  poor  Pocahontas,  sick  from  the 
change  in  her  mode  of  living,  and  yet  unwilling  to  go,  set 
out  with  her  husband  on  her  return  home.  While  waiting 
at  Gravesend  for  the  sailing  of  the  ship,  she  died,  and  was 
buried  in  one  of  the  parish  churches  of  that  town. 

Rolfe  returned  to  Virginia,  where  he  founded  a  consider- 
able estate.  His  son,  Thomas  Rolfe,  after  being  educated 
in  England  and  growing  to  manhood  there,  joined  his  father 
in  America.  He  left  one  son ;  that  son  had  one  daughter ; 
that  daughter  became  the  mother  of  a  family  of  daughters, 
who  married  respectable  young  men  of  the  colony ;  and  thus 
the  blood  of  Pocahontas  circulates  to  this  day  in  the  prin- 
cipal families  of  Virginia. 

Later  in  life,  John  Smith,  being  in  London  poor  and  neg- 
lected, appears  to  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  booksel- 
lers *  for  whom  he  wrote  various  versions  of  his  travels  and 
adventures.  It  was  at  this  part  of  his  life,  and  to  make 
these  works  more  attractive,  that  he  expanded  the  tale  of 
Pocahontas  into  the  form  in  which  we  usually  find  it.  His 
writings  have  been  received  with  full  credit  almost  to  the 
present  day.  A  copy  of  his  History  of  Virginia  was  sold  at 
auction  the  other  evening  in  New  York,  for  two  hundred  and 
sixty-two  dollars. 

In  another  way,  Rolfe  is  connected  with  the  early  history 
of  Virginia.  In  the  spring  of  1612,  the  fifth  year  of  the 


458  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Colony,  he  performed  an  action  which,  if  we  were  to  judge 
it  by  its  consequences  only,  we  might  pronounce  the  most 
important  deed  ever  done  in  colonial  Virginia.  Being  an 
old  smoker,  he  had  the  curiosity  to  know  whether  white 
men  could  raise  good  tobacco  in  Virginia ;  and,  accordingly, 
he  planted  some  tobacco  seed  at  Jamestown.  It  grew  well 
during  the  summer,  and  when  the  leaves  were  ripe,  he  cured 
them  as  best  he  could;  for  not  a  person  in  the  colony  was 
acquainted  with  the  proper  process.  When  the  leaves  were 
dry,  he  tried  them  in  his  pipe,  and  pronounced  the  tobacco 
excellent.  His  friend,  Ralph  Hamor,  secretary  of  the 
colony,  tried  it;  and  finding  it  very  much  to  his  taste, 
planted  some  seed  in  his  own  garden,  in  the  following 
spring.  Mr.  Hamor,  in  his  tract  upon  Virginia,  published 
in  1615,  gave  Virginia  tobacco  a  strong  indorsement. 

w  I  dare  affirm,"  he  wrote,  "  that  no  country  under  the  sun 
can  or  doth  afford  more  pleasant,  sweet,  and  strong  tobacco 
than  I  have  tasted  there,  even  of  my  own  planting;  which, 
howsoever,  being  then  the  first  year  of  a  trial  thereof,  we 
had  not  the  knowledge  to  cure  and  make  up ;  yet  are  there 
some  men  resident  there,  out  of  the  last  year's  well-observed 
experience,  which  both  know,  and,  I  doubt  not,  will  make 
and  return  such  tobacco  this  year  (1615)  that  even  England 
shall  acknowledge  the  goodness  thereof." 

He  further  says,  when  urging  emigrants  to  go  to  Virginia, 
that  any  man  in  the  colony  could  there  earn  his  clothes  by 
raising  tobacco, —  clothes  having  to  be  bought  in  England 
with  money. 

The  secretary's  prediction  proved  correct.  English  smok- 
ers so  well  appreciated  the  tobacco  of  Virginia,  that  the 
price  of  the  article  ranged  from  three  to  five  shillings  a 
;pound.  A  colonist  needed  to  send  only  a  very  few  pounds 
-of  tobacco  home  to  get  an  excellent  suit  of  clothes.  Natu- 


POCAHONTAS  AND  HUSBAND.  459 

rally  enough,  every  one  was  eager  to  plant  tobacco ;  and  we 
read  of  tobacco  growing  luxuriantly  in  the  very  streets  and 
public  places  of  Jamestown.  Nothing  could  "draw  the 
people  off,"  says  an  old  historian,  "  from  their  greedy  and 
immoderate  pursuit  of  tobacco " ;  although  a  hundred  and 
fifty  people  were  sent  out  from  England  to  set  up  three  iron 
works,  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  introduce  the  culture  of 
hemp,  flax,  and  silk.  Tobacco  became,  and  for  two  centu- 
ries remained,  the  great  staple  product  of  Virginia.  For  a 
century  and  more,  it  served  in  part  as  the  currency  of  the 
colony.  We  read  of  men  bequeathing  hundreds  of  pounds 
of  tobacco  for  endowing  a  college  or  converting  the  heathen. 
Clergymen  were  paid  salaries  of  so  many  thousand  pounds 
of  tobacco  per  annum.  Taxes,  debts,  and  rents  were  paid 
in  tobacco. 

No  colony  can  flourish,  if  indeed  it  can  exist,  unless  it 
produces  something  which  can  be  sold  for  money  in  other 
and  older  countries ;  since  it  cannot,  for  many  years,  manu- 
facture the  implements,  utensils,  fabrics,  and  apparel,  with- 
out which  it  must  either  perish,  or  lapse  into  barbarism. 
Virginia  now  had  such  a  commodity ;  and  from  this  time 
forward  it  could  make  a  return  to  the  company  at  home,  and 
buy  with  its  own  produce  indispensable  articles  manufac- 
tured in  England.  Such  were  the  consequences  of  John 
Rolfe's  planting  of  tobacco  seed  in  the  spring  of  1612. 

So  much  for  Pocahontas  and  her  husband. 


INTENTION    OF    THE    COMPASS, 

AND  WHO  FIRST  USED  IT. 


A  PERSON  does  not  need  to  go  to  sea  in  order  to  find  out 
how  lost  and  helpless  a  sailor  would  be  in  the  midst  of  the 
ocean  if  he  had  no  compass.  A  few  summers  ago  I  passed 
some  days  at  one  of  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  a  small  rocky  group 
in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  ten  miles  from  the  coast  of  New 
Hampshire  ;  and  I  used  to  go  out  almost  every  day  in  a  boat, 
fishing  for  cod  and  haddock.  One  misty  morning,  I  remem- 
ber, I  started  with  three  or  four  others  for  one  of  the  favorite 
fishing-places,  about  half  a  mile  off.  We  had  been  there  for 
an  hour  or  two,  and  had  caught  a  few  very  fine  fish,  when 
some  one,  looking  up,  cried  out,  "  Where  is  the  island?  " 

We  all  looked  around,  but  the  island  was  gone  !  The  mist 
had  changed  into  a  dense  fog,  which  had  gathered  over  our 
rocky  abode,  and  hid  it  completely  from  our  view.  Nor  was 
there  any  object  in  sight,  except  another  of  the  island  boats, 
containing  a  fishing-party  like  ourselves.  >We  called  out  to 
them,  "  Where  is  the  island  ?  " 

To  which  one  of  them  replied,  "It's  drifted  out  to  sea." 

Which,  in  fact,  we  might  have  done,  if  we  had  been  a  little 
farther  off. 

How  entirely  lost  we  seemed  for  a  few  minutes  !  Every 
one  gave  his  opinion  as  to  the  direction  in  which  the  island 
was ;  but,  as  our  boat  had  been  floating  about  without  an 
anchor,  and  had  consequently  changed  its  position  every  mo- 
ment, it  was  all  guesswork ;  and  we  might  have  rowed  about 


462  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

a  whole  day  without  finding  it,  and  drifted  out  of  sight  of 
land.  While  we  were  talking  the  matter  over,  we  heard  the 
large  bell  of  the  hotel  ring,  which  of  course  told  us  the  way 
we  were  to  go,  in  order  to  reach  the  island.  So  we  kept  on 
our  fishing  for  two  or  three  hours  longer,  and  the  mist  soon 
rolled  away,  revealing  to  view  the  gray  rock,  the  long  white 
hotel,  the  ladies  walking  about,  and  the  boys  fishing  for 
perch  along  the  shore.  We  afterwards  learned  that  the  regu- 
lar frequenters  of  this  island  considered  it  unsafe  to  go  a 
hundred  yards  from  the  shore  without  a  compass,  and  always 
took  a  pocket-compass  with  them,  in  case  a  sudden  fog  should 
wrap  the  island  from  their  sight. 

I  was  telling  this  incident  one  evening,  some  time  after 
dark,  when  I  was  out  in  a  boat  on  Lake  Champlain.  It  was 
pretty  dark,  and  I  had  been  asking  the  boatman  by  what 
marks  he  was  guided  in  steering  the  boat  towards  the  little 
cove  to  which  we  were  bound.  He  said  he  depended  entirely 
on  the  outline  of  the  shore,  which  he  proceeded  to  explain  to 
us.  After  I  had  told  my  story,  he  told  one  which  showed,  in 
a  far  more  striking  manner,  what  a  handy  thing  it  may  be 
sometimes  to  have  a  compass  in  your  pocket. 

He  said  that  he  had  been  a  prisoner  for  eleven  months  in 
Andersonville  during  the  late  war,  and  when  he  heard  that 
General  Sherman  was  at  Atlanta,  about  two  hundred  and 
forty  miles  distant,  he  and  his  comrade  determined  to  try  to 
escape,  and  make  their  way  thither.  One  of  them  had  an 
old-fashioned  watch,  with  a  compass  in  the  back  of  it ;  and 
by  this  they  expected  to  direct  their  course,  which  was 
nearly  northwest.  But,  as  they  expected  to  travel  only  by 
night,  they  resolved  not  to  start  until  they  could  get  a  box 
of  matches,  so  as  to  be  able  to  strike  a  light  now  and  then, 
to  look  at  their  compass.  They  delayed  their  departure  for 
six  weeks,  trying  to  get  a  box  of  matches,  for  the  purchase 


INVENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  463 

of  which  they  gave  one  of  their  negro  friends  their  last  five- 
dollar  bill.  He  could  not  buy  a  box  of  matches  for  five 
dollars,  nor  for  any  other  number  of  dollars,  and  so  at  last 
they  made  up  their  minds  to  start  without  them. 

Assisted  by  their  black  friend,  they  got  away  one  after- 
noon, and  lay  hidden  until  late  in  the  evening,  when  they 
started  at  a  great  pace  through  the  woods,  and  came  about 
midnight  to  a  road  which  seemed  to  go,  as  nearly  as  they 
could  guess,  exactly  northwest.  Seemed,  I  say ;  but  it 
might  not ;  and,  if  it  did  not,  it  would  lead  them  to  cap- 
ture and  death.  The  night  was  not  very  dark,  but  the 
stars  were  hidden  by  clouds ;  else  the  friendly  North  Star 
would  have  guided  them  upon  their  way.  Anxious  as 
they  were  to  get  on,  they  stood  for  several  minutes  com- 
paring recollections,  and  debating  the  great  question  upon 
which  their  lives  depended.  But  the  more  they  talked 
it  over,  the  more  uncertain  they  became ;  and  now  they 
bitterly  regretted  their  impatience  in  coming  away  without 
matches. 

There  were  a  great  number  of  fire-flies  flying  about.  A 
lucky  thought  occurred  to  one  of  them,  —  the  boatman  who 
told  us  the  story.  He  caught  a  fire-fly,  and,  taking  it  be- 
tween his  thumb  and  finger,  held  it  over  his  compass. 
Imagine  their  joy  to  find  that  the  insect  gave  them  plenty  of 
light  for  their  purpose ;  and  imagine  their  still  greater  joy 
to  discover  that  the  road  led  straight  to  the  Union  army. 
Eight  nights  of  travel  brought  them  safely  to  it. 

Admirable  invention !  I  often  wonder  that  a  thing  so 
valuable  can  be  so  small,  simple,  and  cheap.  It  is  nothing 
but  a  needle,  a  pivot,  and  a  card,  which  you  can  buy  for 
half  a  dollar,  and  carry  in  your  pocket,  or  dangle  at  the  end 
of  a  watch-chain.  Yet,  small  and  trifling  as  it  is,  a  ship's 
company  that  should  find  themselves  in  the  middle  of  the 


464       ,  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ocean  without  a  compass  would  consider  it  a  great  favor  to 
be  allowed  to  buy  one  for  a  million  dollars.  - »  »  • 

There  is  a  kind  of  iron  ore,  of  a  dark-gray  color,  found  in 
iron-mines  in  many  parts  of  the  world,  which  is  called  load- 
stone, or  natural  magnet.  It  is  about  as  heavy  as  the 
common  iron  ore,  and  looks  like  it,  except  that  it  is  a  little 
more  glistening.  It  has,  however,  most  wonderful  and 
mysterious  properties.  One  is,  that  it  attracts  to  itself  iron 
and  other  metals.  The  smaller  the  magnet,  the  more  power 
it  usually  has.  There  have  been  found  magnets  weighing  a 
twentieth  part  of  an  ounce,  which  could  lift  a  piece  of  iron 
weighing  two  ounces,  or  forty  times  their  own  weight;  and 
the  story  goes,  that  Sir  Isaac  Newton  had  a  magnet  set  in  a 
finger-ring  which  could  lift  a  piece  of  iron  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  times  its  own  weight.  There  is  a  famous  magnet 
at  Cadiz,  which  was  presented  by  the  Emperor  of  China  to 
one  of  the  kings  of  Portugal.  It  weighs  thirty-eight  pounds, 
and  can  lift  two  hundred  pounds.  It  is  not  common,  how- 
ever, for  a  loadstone  to  be  capable  of  lifting  more  than  ten 
times  its  weight.  This  attractive  power  of  the  magnet  is 
one  of  the  most  curious  things  in  nature,  and  one  which 
nobody  has  yet  been  wise  enough  to  explain. 

Another  property  of  the  magnet  is  far  more  important  to 
man.  If  you  take  a  bar  of  iron  or  steel,  and  rub  it  against 
a  loadstone,  and  then  suspend  it  carefully  in  the  middle  by  a 
thread,  it  will  always  point  north  and  south,  or  very  nearly 
north  and  south.  A  compass  is  nothing  more  than  a 
small  steel  needle,  which,  having  been  rubbed  against 
a  magnet  in  a  certain  manner,  is  balanced  with  great  nicety 
upon  a  pivot,  and  the  whole  enclosed  in  a  box.  That  needle 
points  toward  the  North  Star,  and  serves  to  guide  the  mar- 
iner over  the  trackless  deep,  when  neither  sun  nor  stars  are 
visible.  It  does  not  tell  him  where  he  is  ;  but  it  tells  him  in 


INVENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  465 

what  direction  he  is  sailing,  and  it  tells  him,  with  the  help 
of  other  instruments,  in  what  direction  he  must  sail  to  reach 
the  haven  where  he  would  be. 

No  one  knows  who  invented  the  compass,  nor  precisely 
when  it  was  invented,  nor  even  who  first  found  a  natural 
magnet.     The  fanciful  Greeks,  who  had  a  story  about  every- 
thing, used  to  say  that  a  shepherd,  named  Magnes,  was  tend- 
ing his  sheep  one  day  on  Mount  Ida,  when  he  noticed  that 
the  iron  crook  at  the  end  of  his  shepherd's  staff  was  attracted 
by  a  piece  of  dark-colored  stone,  which  he  brought  with  him 
down  the  mountain.     This  is  the  reason,  the  Greeks  say, 
why  the  magnet  was  called,  in  their  language,  Magnes.    The 
story  is  probably  one  of  those  pretty  tales  which  the  Greeks 
delighted  to  invent  respecting  the  origin  of  things.     Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  the  Chinese,  and  all  the 
ancient  civilized  nations,  knew  something  about  the  attrac- 
tive power  of  the  loadstone ;  and  the  Chinese,  it  (seems, 
employed  the  directing  power  of  the  magnetic  needle,  more 
than  a  thousand  years  ago,  in  their  journeys  across  the  wide, 
uninhabited  plains  of  Asia.     But   the  compass,  such  as  we 
have  it  now,  was  unknown  in  Europe  until  about  the  year 
1300. 

I  was  saying  the  other  day  to  a  gentleman  well  versed  in 
the  Bible,  that  the  ancients  did  not  possess  the  compass,  but 
sailed  the  Mediterranean  and  other  inland  seas,  or  skirted 
along  the  coasts  of  the  ocean,  without  the  aid  of  this  precious 
instrument. 

"  But,"  he  asked,  scratching  his  head  with  the  end  of  his 
pen,  "  does  not  St.  Paul  say  something  about  using  the  com- 
pass on  one  of  his  voyages  in  the  Mediterranean  Sea  ?  " 

"Impossible,"  said  I.  "There  was  not  a  compass  in 
existence  at  that  time  in  that  part  of  the  world." 

"  I  think  you  are  mistaken,"  he  rejoined. 


466  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

I  handed  him  a  Bible,  and  asked  him  to  find  the  passage  ; 
which  he  proceeded  to  do  with  the  alacrity  of,«a  man  who  is 
about  to  win  a  victory.  And,  sure  enough,  he  soon  turned 
to  Acts  xxviii.  verses  12  and  13,  and  read  as  follows  :  — 

"  And,  landing  at  Syracuse,  we  tarried  there  three  days.  And 
from  thence  we  fetched  a  compass,  and  came  to  Rhegium." 

I  must  confess  that  for  a  moment  I  was  puzzled.  But, 
being  positive  that  the  compass  was  not  known  either  to  the 
Greeks,  the  Romans,  or  the  Jews,  I  thought  that  perhaps 
the  translators  had  used  the  word  "  compass  "  for  some  other 
instrument  which  may  have  been  used  by  the  ancient  navi- 
gators. It  then  occurred  to  us  to  look  up  the  passage  in  the 
Greek  Testament,  and  ascertain  what  the  word  was  which 
had  been  translated  "  compass."  The  mystery  vanished  at 
once ;  for  we  found  that  St.  Paul  had  used  the  Greek  verb 
which  means  to  tack,  to  go  about,  to  make  a  circuit,  which 
sailors,  in  the  days  of  King  James  I.,  when  our  translation 
was  made,  used  to  call  fetching  a  compass.  The  passage, 
therefore,  simply  means  this  :  "  And  from  Syracuse  we  made 
a  circuit "  (round  the  island  of  Sicily)  "  and  so  came  to 
Rhegium  "  (on  the  coast  of  Italy) . 

The  captain  of  the  ship,  then,  that  bore  the  valiant  Apostle 
Paul  to  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber,  had  no  compass  on  board 
his  vessel,  but  was  guided  by  the  stars,  the  sun,  and  the 
bold  outline  of  the  shore.  Nevertheless,  it  was  from  the 
native  land  of  St.  Paul  that  the  Crusaders,  about  seven  hun- 
dred years  ago,  brought  home  to  Europe  specimens  of  the 
loadstone,  and  some  little  knowledge  of  its  properties.  The 
first  Crusaders  returned  from  Palestine  about  the  year  1100, 
but  the  first  mention  which  has  been  discovered  of  the 
directing  power  of  the  magnetic  needle  occurs  in  a  book  that 
bears  date  1180.  In  a  French  poem  called  "The  Bible," 


INVENTION  OF  THE  COMPASS.  467 

published  about  1250,  there  is  a  passage,  too,  in  which  the 
author  expresses  the  wish  that  the  Pope  were  as  safe  a  point 
to  look  at  as  the  North  Star  is  to  sailors,  who  can  steer 
towards  that  star  by  the  direction  of  a  needle  floating  in  a 
straw  on  a  basin  of  water,  after  being  touched  by  the  magnet. 
And  there  is  a  still  more  interesting  allusion  to  the  needle 
in  an  account  which  has  come  down  to  us  of  a  visit  paid 
about  the  year  1258  by  a  learned  Italian  to  Roger  Bacon,  the 
celebrated  English  philosopher,  the  fame  of  whose  learning 
had  spread  over  Europe. 

"I  did  not  fail,"  says  the  Italian  scholar,  "to  see  Friar 
Bacon  as  soon  as  I  arrived ;  and,  among  other  things,  he 
showed  me  a  black,  ugly  stone,  called  a  magnet,  which  has 
the  surprising  property  of  drawing  iron  to  it;  and  upon 
which  if  a  needle  be  rubbed,  and  afterwards  fastened  to  a 
straw,  so  that  it  shall  swim  upon  water,  the  needle  will 
instantly  turn  towards  the  Pole  Star;  therefore,  be  the 
night  ever  so  dark,  so  that  neither  moon  nor  star  be  visible, 
yet  shall  the  mariner  be  able  by  the  help  of  this  needle  to 
steer  his  vessel  aright." 

It  would  have  been  difficult  for  a  sailor,  tossing  upon  the 
wild,  tempestuous  Atlantic,  to  keep  a  needle  afloat  upon  a 
still  surface  of  water,  and  I  doubt  very  much  whether  it  was 
often  attempted.  There  was  another  reason  why  the  captains 
of  ships  in  that  age  would  have  hesitated  to  employ  such  a 
contrivance,  which  our  Italian  thus  explains  :  "This  discov- 
ery, which  appears  useful  in  so  great  a  degree  to  all  who 
travel  by  sea,  must  remain  concealed  until  other  times, 
because  no  master-mariner  dares  to  use  it,  lest  he  should  fall 
under  a  supposition  of  his  being  a  magician  ;  nor  would  even 
the  sailors  venture  themselves  out  to  sea  under  his  command 
if  he  took  with  him  an  instrument  which  carries  so  great  an 
appearance  of  being  constructed  under  the  influence  of  some 
infernal  spirit." 


468  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Well  might  he  say  so  in  speaking  of  poor  Friar  Bacon, 
who,  not  many  years  after  this  visit,  was  imprisoned  in  his 
convent  cell,  while  his  works  were  condemned  as  dangerous 
and  devilish.  The  ignorant  monks  of  his  time  thought  he 
must  have  sold  his  soul  to  the  Devil,  because  he  said  that  he 
and  other  astronomers,  by  noting  the  movements  of  the  hea- 
venly bodies,  might  be  able  to  foretell  their  future  move- 
ments, especially  such  events  as  eclipses  of  the  sun  and  moon. 
He  was  a  prisoner  for  ten  years, — he,  the  most  valuable 
and  enlightened  man  of  his  age,  —  and  was  released  only 
when  his  religious  superiors  thought  he  was  too  old  and  too 
infirm  to  write  any  more  books,  or  make  any  more  discover- 
ies. He  lived  but  a  year  after  his  release,  during  which  time 
he  often  said  he  was  sorry  for  having  taken  so  much  trouble 
on  behalf  of  science. 

I  have  often  thought,  that,  if  Roger  Bacon  had  not  been 
himself  a  priest,  the  ignorant  and  timid  priests  of  that  day 
would  have  burnt  him  at  the  stake,  and  all  because  he  knew 
more  than  they  !  But  in  those  days  people  really  thought  that 
the  Devil  went  secretly  about  the  world,  hungry  for  human 
souls,  and  that  men  often  made  compacts  with  him,  agreeing 
to  serve  him  forever,  after  their  death,  if  in  this  world  he 
would  make  them  exceedingly  wise,  powerful,  beautiful,  or 
rich.  Sailors  have  always  been  given  to  such  fancies  ;  and, 
very  likely,  if  a  captain  had  in  that  age  dared  to  steer  his 
ship  by  so  simple  a  thing  as  a  needle  enclosed  in  a  straw, 
and  floating  on  a  cup  of  water,  the  sailors  would  have  thought 
him  in  league  with  the  Devil,  and  tossed  him  overboard, 
another  Jonah,  to  appease  the  tempest. 

Many  a  year  passed  away,  therefore,  before  the  magnetic 
needle  was  much  used  by  sailors.  Still  it  was  used ;  for  in  an 
Icelandic  book,  written  even  before  Roger  Bacon  was  born, 
we  read  that  the  brave  Norwegian  chief  who  settled  Iceland, 


INTENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  469 

found  his  way  thither  from  Norway,  a  distance  of  seven  hun- 
dred miles,  guided  by  ravens.  "For,"  says  the  author,  "  in 
those  times,  seamen  had  no  loadstones  in  the  northern  coun- 
tries." These  words  are  a  positive  proof  that  the  direct- 
ing power  of  the  magnetic  needle  was  known  as  early  as  ,the 
year  1150. 

But  how  could  ravens  direct  a  ship  from  Norway  to  Ice- 
land? I  suppose  that,  when  this  brave  navigator  began  to 
doubt  whether  he  was  sailing  in  the  right  direction,  he  let 
loose  one  of  his  ravens,  and  by  watching  which  way  it  took 
to  get  back  to  its  home,  he  could  ascertain  in  what  direction 
Iceland  lay. 

But  the  magnetic  needle  could  never  have  been  of  very 
great  use  to  sailors,  while  it  could  only  be  used  wrapped  in 
a  straw  floating  on  the  water,  or  suspended  by  a  string. 
Nevertheless  it  was  two  centuries  after  the  Crusaders  brought 
home  the  first  loadstone  to  Europe,  before  the  compass,  as 
we  now  have  it,  was  invented,  An  Italian  navigator,  it 
seems,  named  Flavio  Gioja,  who  used  to  sail  out  of  Naples 
(where,  a  friend  tells  me,  the  name  is  still  common),  was 
the  man  who  first  had  ingenuity  enough  to  mount  the  needle 
upon  a  pivot,  and  enclose  it  in  a  box.  In  fact,  he  "  boxed 
the  compass  " ;  and  this  is  the  reason,  I  suppose,  why  the 
Italian  word  for  compass  is  bossola,  a  box.  In  French,  it  is 
boussole,  which  is  evidently  derived  from  the  Italian  word. 
This  boxing  of  the  needle,  or  the  invention  of  the  compass, 
took  place  about  the  year  1300,  five  hundred  and  seventy- 
one  years  ago. 

Then  the  sailor  needed  no  longer  to  creep  timidly  along  the 
shore,  and  lie  to  whenever  the  sky  was  veiled  with  clouds, 
or  a  mist  hung  over  the  landmarks  by  which  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  steer.  Much  remained  to  be  done  before  the  broad 
ocean  could  be  navigated  with  certainty  and  safety  by  an 


470  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ordinary  man ;  but  the  first  and  greatest  step  was  taken  when 
the  compass  was  invented. 

Still  we  must  not  suppose  that  there  were  no  adventurous 
navigators  before  that  period,  and  no  science  of  navigation. 
At  the  very  time  when  Captain  Flavio  Gioja  invented  the 
compass  at  Naples,  the  ship-yards  of  Venice  employed  six- 
teen thousand  men,  and  the  ships  of  Venice  dotted  every 
inland  sea,  and  swarmed  in  every  port  of  Europe,  bearing  to 
them  the  spices,  fabrics,  and  jewels  brought  from  India. 
And  had  not  the  Norwegians  sailed  to  Iceland,  seven  hun- 
dred miles,  and  from  Iceland  to  Greenland,  two  hundred 
miles,  and  afterwards  from  Greenland  to  Massachusetts,  to 
cut  firewood  and  ship-timber,  and  this  seven  hundred  years 
before  Columbus?  In  the  East  Indies,  too,  they  built  long 
galleys  and  huge  junks,  some  of  which  required  a  crew  of 
three  hundred  men,  carried  six  thousand  bags  of  pepper,  and 
had  ten  boats  hung  over  the  side,  just  where  we  hang  them 
now.  They  built  their  vessels  in  compartments,  too ;  so 
that,  if  a  ship  sprung  a  leak,  the  water  was  kept  out  of  all 
the  hold  except  one  small  portion,  from  which  the  cargo 
could  be  quickly  removed.  There  were  map-makers  then  in 
the  commercial  cities,  and  a  good  many  of  them ;  for  at  that 
day,  of  course,  every  map  was  made  by  hand.  And  men 
who  live  much  out  of  doors,  and  pass  a  part  of  every  night 
under  the  stars,  become  extremely  well  acquainted  with  the 
heavens  above,  and  with  the  objects  around  them,  and  can 
feel  their  way,  in  an  astonishing  manner,  without  chart  or 
compass. 

Not  the  less  does  the  invention  of  the  compass  make  an 
era  in  the  history  of  the  human  race.  Bold  and  skilful  as 
the  ancient  sailors  were  in  navigating  inland  seas,  and  sailing 
along  well-known  coasts,  it  was  a  very  different  thing  when 
they  found  themselves  blown  out  upon  the  broad  ocean. 


INVENTION   OF   THE   COMPASS.  471 

The  Atlantic  was  then  called  the  Sea  of  Darkness  ;  and  many 
sailors  supposed  that  if  they  should  sail  far  enough  down 
into  the  torrid  zone,  they  would  come  to  where  the  waters  of 
the  ocean  boiled  continually,  and  that  finally  they  would  reach 
the  fiery  mouth  of  hell,  into  which  they  would  be  drawn,  and 
punished  for  their  audacity  in  everlasting  fire. 

I  have  another  curious  thing  to  tell  about  the  compass, 
which  I  heard  of  only  the  other  day.  It  is  said  above  that 
Roger  Bacon's  way  of  showing  the  power  of  the  magnetic 
needle  was  to  enclose  it  in  a  straw,  and  let  it  float  upon 
water.  The  best  compasses  now  in  use  are  made  on  that 
very  principle.  Ritchie's  patent  "Liquid  Compass,"  now 
used  in  the  ships  of  the  United  States  Navy,  and  by  the 
Cunard  line  of  steamships,  has  the  needle  enclosed,  not  in  a 
straw,  of  course,  but  in  a  very  thin,  round  case  of  metal, 
air-tight,  which  floats  upon  liquid  in  such  a  way  as  to 
steady  the  needle,  and  make  it  work  much  better  than  in  the 
ordinary  compass.  The  needle  has  the  additional  support 
of  a  pivot.  In  this  compass,  the  needle  being  supported, 
in  great  part,  by  the  liquid,  it  can  be  heavier,  and  thus  have 
a  stronger  directing  force  than  the  light  needles  which  have 
no  support  but  the  pivot. 

So  much  for  the  invention  of  this  wonderful  instrument. 
Now,  let  me  relate  how  it  came  to  be  used,  and  who  first 
had  the  daring  and  enterprise  to  navigate  the  ocean. 

When  I  was  a  school-boy  and  studied  geography,  I  used 
to  wonder  sometimes,  as  I  was  poring  over  a  large  map  of 
the  world,  how  it  came  to  pass  that  such  a  country  as  Por- 
tugal had  so  many  possessions  in  distant  parts  of  the  earth. 
It  is  a  little  kingdom,  about  as  large  as  our  State  of  Indiana, 
and  contains  only  about  as  many  people  as  the  State  of  New 
York;  and  those  people,  travellers  tell  us,  are  net  very 
industrious,  skilful,  or  enterprising.  And  yet  the  old  map 

30 


472  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTEEFRISE. 

which  I  used  to  look  at  seemed  to  be  dotted  all  over  with 
places  marked,  "Belongs  to  Portugal." 

It  is  not  so  surprising  that  this  small  kingdom,  this  odd 
corner  of  Europe,  should  have  gained  possession  of  most 
of  those  islands  off  the  African  coast,  —  the  Azores, 
Madeiras,  and  the  Cape  Verdes, — because  they  are  not 
very  far  from  Portugal,  and  because  there  is  no  other  Chris- 
tian country  from  which  they  can  be  so  conveniently  reached. 
Most  of  those  islands  are  within  seven  or  eight  hundred 
miles  of  its  southwestern  corner.  But  away  down  the 
African  coast,  in  what  is  called  Lower  Guinea,  the  land  of 
ivory,  gold-dust,  and  precious  gums,  we  find  a  great  region 
of  country  belonging  to  Portugal,  with  a  Portuguese  town 
in  it,  a  Portuguese  governor-general,  and  churches  conducted 
by  Portuguese  priests,  in  which  crowds  of  half-naked  negroes 
and  mulattoes  bow  low  before  the  cross,  and  the  image  of 
the  Virgin. 

Ai}d  then,  on  the  other  side  of  Africa,  there  is  another 
extensive  region,  called  Mozambique,  which  also  belongs  to 
Portugal.  Here  Portugal  has  a  territory  as  large  as  the 
State  of  Virginia,  from  which  are  exported  indigo  and  rare 
drugs,  fine  woods  for  furniture,  elephants'  tusks,  the  teeth 
of  the  hippopotamus,  and  the  horns  of  the  rhinoceros ;  to 
say  nothing  of  rice,  sugar,  spice,  coffee,  and  coal.  Here 
again  we  find  a  Portuguese  city  of  considerable  size,  with 
great  barracks  for  soldiers,  with  storehouses  and  wharves,  a 
splendid  palace  for  the  governor-general,  a  cathedral,  and 
several  smaller  churches  and  convents.  In  this  city,  which 
consists  of  palaces  for  the  Portuguese  and  huts  for  the 
natives,  there  are  a  Portuguese  bishop,  Portuguese  priests, 
nuns,  and  monks,  Portuguese  judges  and  courts.  The  Por- 
tuguese have  been  so  long  established  in  that  country  that 
one  of  their  towns  there  has  had  time  to  go  to  decay.  It  is 


INVENTION   OP   THE    COMPASS.  473 

called  Melinda,  and  you  may  see  there  the  ruins  of  Portu- 
guese churches,  convents,  storehouses,  wharves,  and  pal- 
aces, which  were  built  three  centuries  ago. 

But  this  is  not  all.  If  you  should  sail  from  the  ruined 
walls  and  wharves  of  Melinda  two  thousand  miles  to  the 
westward,  across  the  ocean,  and  enter  the  harbor  of  Goa,  on 
the  coast  of  India,  you  would  find  a  Portuguese  settlement 
and  city  that  would  fill  you  with  still  greater  astonishment. 
Neither  the  English  nor  the  French  nor  the  Dutch  have 
ever  built  in  that  part  of  the  world  cathedrals  or  palaces  so 
splendid  as  those  with  which  the  Portuguese  have  adorned 
this  city,  so  far  from  their  native  land.  One  church  there  is 
decorated  with  beautiful  paintings  brought  from  Italy ;  and 
the  cathedral  is  so  exceedingly  gorgeous,  and  so  vast  in 
extent,  that  it  would  not  be  thought  out  of  place  in  one  of 
the  principal  cities  of  Catholic  Europe.  These  buildings,  it 
is  true,  are  going  to  decay ;  but  they  show  what  power  the 
Portuguese  must  have  had  in  India,  when  they  could  spend 
the  revenue  of  an  Indian  province  upon  one  convent  or  one 
church.  To  this  day  there  is  a  Portuguese  viceroy  resident 
there,  and  a  Portuguese  archbishop ;  and  there  is  also  a 
Portuguese  seminary  for  the  education  of  priests. 

Then  there  is  Macao,  a  Portuguese  city  in  China,  where 
again  we  find  amazing  evidences,  in  the  form  of  churches, 
convents,  and  seminaries,  of  the  power  once  possessed  in 
this  part  of  the  world  by  the  Portuguese.  Indeed,  it  was  at 
this  city  of  Macao  that  Camoens,  the  only  Portuguese  poet 
known  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  composed  the  only  famous 
poem  which  that  country  has  produced.  Macao  was  given  by 
the  Emperor  of  China  to  the  mighty  King  of  Portugal,  in 
return  for  some  assistance  which  the  Portuguese  King  had 
rendered  him  in  driving  pirates  from  the  Chinese  seas. 

Three  hundred  years  ago,  there  was  not  a  head  in  all  the 


474  TRIUMPHS   OP   ENTERPRISE. 

Eastern  world  'that  would  not  bow  low  to  the  Portuguese 
uniform;  and  millions  of  dusky  human  beings  in  Asia  and 
Africa  toiled  from  youth  to  old  age  to  enrich  that  small 
and  distant  kingdom.  In  America,  too,  there  is  Brazil,  a 
country  containing  nearly  four  millions  of  square  miles,  — 
larger  than  the  United  States,  — which  belonged  to  Portugal 
until  a  few  years  ago.  Here  the  Portuguese  language  is  still 
spoken,  Portuguese  laws  and  customs  still  prevail,  and  it  is 
governed  by  an  emperor  sprung  from  the  royal  family  of 
Portugal. 

I  used  to  wonder  at  these  things  when  I  had  but  a  slight 
knowledge  of  them  at  school ;  but  in  later  years  I  found  out 
the  reason.  The  reason  why  Portugal,  a  little,  insignificant 
kingdom,  held  possessions  so  valuable  and  numerous  in 
those  distant  parts  of  the  world,  is  simply  this  :  The  Portu- 
guese were  the  first  to  turn  the  compass  to  account  in  navi- 
gating the  ocean. 

But  this  does  not  quite  explain  the  mystery.  The  com- 
pass is  a  delicate  instrument,  and  one  which  lazy  and  igno- 
rant people  would  be  very  unlikely  to  take  an  interest  in, 
and  still  more  unlikely  to  use  in  exploring  unknown  seas. 
From  what  we  know  of  the  Portuguese  of  the  present  day  we 
should  not  suppose  them  to  have  been  at  any  time  very  ener- 
getic, very  enterprising,  or  very  intelligent.  Indeed,  I  was 
told  only  last  year  by  a  New  York  merchant  who  has  lived 
twenty  years  in  India  and  China,  that  many  of  the  Portuguese 
in  Macao,  Goa,  Mozambique,  and  Angola,  are  more  deeply 
sunk  in  vice,  ignorance,  and  superstition  than  the  natives 
themselves.  I  think  we  may  say  that  it  never  would  have 
occurred  to  such  men  as  most  of  the  Portuguese  now  are  to 
take  a  needle  in  a  box  on  board  a  ship,  and  go  forth  to  dis- 
cover and  to  conquer  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe.  It  is 
only  virtuous  and  intelligent  people  who  do  great  and  heroic 


INVENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  475 

things.  We  may  well  ask,  therefore,  how  it  came  to  pass 
that  the  Portuguese,  of  all  the  nations  of  Europe,  should 
have  been  among  the  first  to  understand,  and  the  first  to  use, 
the  compass  in  navigating  the  broad  ocean. 

Kings  and  nobles  are  not  very  much  thought  of  in  America 
at  present,  and  this  is  very  proper ;  for  they  appear  to  have 
done  nearly  all  the  good  they  had  to  do  in  the  world.  But 
the  time  was  when  kings  and  nobles  were  worth  all  they 
cost,  and  when  they  greatly  assisted  the  nations  in  coming 
out  of  barbarism  and  ignorance.  If  kings  had  not  been 
necessary  to  mankind,  mankind  would  not  have  had  kings 
so  long. 

One  of  the  ways  in  which  kings  and  princes  helped  to 
civilize  nations  was  by  marrying  into  families  better  than 
their  own,  and  thus  bringing  into  a  country  powerful  persons 
who  had  more  knowledge,  more  sense,  or  better  feeling  than 
before  existed  in  it. 

And  the  reason  why  this  little  kingdom  of  Portugal  for 
two  centuries  took  the  lead  in  exploring  and  subduing 
unknown  regions  is,  that  it  had  a  royal  family  which  was  a 
great  deal  better  and  wiser  than  the  race  over  which  it  ruled. 
Henry  of  Burgundy,  first  Count  of  Portugal,  besides  being 
himself  a  valiant  and  high-minded  prince,  was  also  wise 
enough  to  rear  a  son  worthy  to  fill  his  place  and  able  to 
continue  his  work.  That  son,  in  honor  of  his  benefactor,  he 
named  Alphonso  Henry.  He  it  was  who  defeated  the 
Moors  in  one  of  the  fiercest  battles  ever  fought  in  the  Penin- 
sula. Five  Moorish  kings,  it  is  said,  led  against  him  an 
army  of  two  hundred  thousand  men,  while  he  could  muster 
but  thirteen  thousand  troops  for  the  defence  of  his  domin- 
ions. From  morning  until  evening,  upon,  the  plains  of 
Ourique,  the  battle  was  fought ;  and  at  sunset  the  Moors 
took  to  flight,  and  their  army  was  totally  destroyed.  A* 


476  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  close  of  this  bloody  day,  Count  Alphonso  was  proclaimed 
king  by  his  victorious  soldiers ;  and  this  title  being  ratified 
by  the -pope,  as  well  as  by  his  own  valor  and  goodness,  he 
held  it  to  his  dying  day,  and  transmitted  it  to  sixteen  suc- 
cessors of  his  name  and  blood. 

His  wife  Matilda  was  a  woman  worthy  to  be  the  mother 
of  a  royal  line.  It  was  this  noble  pair  who  set  the  example 
of  bringing  up  the  royal  children  of  Portugal  in  those 
habits  of  temperance  and  study  which  caused  so  many  of 
them  to  be  distinguished  for  virtue  and  knowledge.  For- 
tunate was  it,  too,  for  Portugal,  that  Alphonso  I.  and 
Matilda,  his  queen,  had  a  large  family  of  sons  and  daughters, 
who,  marrying  into  other  noble  and  princely  families,  passed 
on  the  good  qualities  and  good  habits  of  their  parents  to 
their  own  children. 

Two  centuries  passed.  The  kingdom  had  increased  in 
wealth  and  power.  The  royal  line  remained  pure,  inquisi- 
tive, and  patriotic.  Prince  Henry,  the  most  important  per- 
sonage since  the  Christian  era,  was  born.  But  this  great 
and  good  man  must  be  more  formally  introduced  to  the 
reader. 

Portugal  ends  in  a  promontory  that  juts  far  out  into  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  and  points  straight  to  the  Madeira  Islands. 
A  bold  and  lofty  headland  it  is,  named  Cape  St.  Vincent,  — 
very  familiar  to  sailors  bound  for  the  Mediterranean,  and 
famous  in  these  modern  times  for  a  great  naval  battle  fought 
near  it  in  1797,  for  gaining  which  an  English  admiral  was 
created  Earl  St.  Vincent. 

About  three  miles  to  the  east  of  this  promontory  there  is 
another,  called  Cape  Sagres,  of  very  peculiar  form  and  char- 
acter. It  is  shaped  something  like  a  long  human  foot,  and 
extends  out  into  the  sea  about  three  quarters  of  a  mile.  It 
is  about  one  quarter  of  a  mile  wide  in  its  widest  part,  and  it 


INVENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  477 

is  elevated  a  hundred  feet  or  more  above  the  surface  of  the 
water.  It  is  a  bleak,  barren,  and  desolate  place.  If  the 
promontory  had  not  been  composed  of  solid  granite,  it 
would  long  ago  have  been  washed  away  by  the  sea ;  and, 
granite  as  it  is,  the  huge  Atlantic  waves  have  worn  and  torn 
deep  cuttings  in  it,  scooped  out  great  archways  under  it,  and 
have  even  forced  openings  through  the  solid  rock  to  the  sur- 
face of  the  promontory.  Through  these  openings,  and 
especially  through  one  very  large  one,  the  swelling  sea  drives 
out  the  wind  with  great  force ;  and  sometimes  the  sea  itself 
rushes  up  in  a  great  mass,  and,  tossing  itself  high  into  the 
air,  breaks  into  spray,  and  is  carried  by  the  wind  as  far  as 
two  miles  into  the  interior,  thus  blighting  the  vegetation, 
and  keeping  the  grass  from  growing  over  the  loose,  sandy 
soil. 

Standing  upon  this  promontory,  you  behold,  in  all  direc- 
tions but  one,  the  broad  sea.  Before  you,  and  on  each  side 
of  you,  there  is  sea,  sea,  sea,  everywhere  sea ;  and  the  view 
behind  is  a  level  waste,  grassless,  colorless,  from  the  never- 
ceasing  wind  and  spray ;  and  no  sound  is  heard  except  the 
dash  and  thunder  and  retreating  growl  of  the  never-rest- 
ing waves.  And  yet,  this  is  the  place,  of  all  others  in  the 
world,  that  I  should  choose  to  visit,  if  in  the  delightful  days 
of  spring  I  could  have  a  free  passage  to  Anywhere  I  liked. 

Evidently  some  one  else,  in  some  distant  age,  had  the 
same  taste  j  for  all  over  this  promontory  there  are  signs  of 
human  habitation.  Here  there  is  an  old  tower,  once  an 
observatory,  now  used  as  a  hay-loft.  At  another  place  there 
are  old  walls  that  formed  part  of  a  stately  residence.  Yonder 
are  the  ruins  of  a  church.  Elsewhere  there  are  walls  over- 
thrown, and  at  the  beginning  of  the  promontory  there  is  a 
pedestal,  such  as  was  formerly  used  for  the  support  of  a 
wayside  cross.  There  is  also  a  fort,  and  some  barracks,  in 


478  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

which  a  company  of  Portuguese  troops  have  sometimes  been 
stationed.  The  fort  and  the  barracks,  however,  are  modern 
structures,  with  which  we  have  little  concern.  All  the 
buildings  that  once  stood  on  this  cape,  which  have  to  do 
with  our  present  subject,  were  partly  burnt  by  Drake,  in 
1587,  and  tumbled  into  ruins  by  the  great  earthquake  of 
1755. 

Why  should  I  wish  to  visit  a  spot  so  remote  and  desolate  ? 
Who  could  ever  have  lived  in  such  a  place  ?  What  motive 
could  induce  a  man  to  select  Cape  Sagres  for  his  abode  in 
sunny,  vine-clad  Portugal  ? 

Come  into  this  fort  and  you  will  see.  Imbedded  in  the 
wall  over  the  inner  gate  of  the  fort  there  is  a  large  slab  of 
fresh-looking  marble,  sculptured  and  inscribed  like  a  tomb- 
stone. On  the  upper  part  there  is  engraved  a  coat  of  arms, 
a  geographical  globe,  and  an  ancient  ship  under  full  sail,  with 
a  pennant  streaming  from  her  mast-head,  and  the  Portuguese 
flag  astern.  Below  is  an  inscription  which  explains  why  I 
desire  to  stand  upon  this  height,  and  who  it  was,  by  residing 
here,  made  it  sacred  forever  !  This  whole  promontory  was 
named  Sacred  by  the  Romans,  because  they  found  upon  it  a 
Druidical  temple,  and  the  present  name  Sagres  is  a  corrup- 
tion of  the  Latin  word  sacrum.  A  far  better  reason  have  we 
for  calling  it  Sacred ;  for  there  lived  upon  it  once  a  man, 
who  spent  his  whole  life  in  the  service  of  his  race. 

The  inscription  on  this  monumental  stone  has  been  trans- 
lated thus : — 

"SACRED  FOREVER. 

"  IN  THIS  PLACE 

The  great  Prince  Henry,  son  of  John  L,  King  of  Portugal,  having 
undertaken  to  discover  the  previously  unknown  regions  of  West 
Africa,  and  also  to  open  a  way,  by  the  circumnavigation  of  Africa, 


INVENTION   OF   THE    COMPASS.  479 

to  the  remotest  parts  of  the  East,  established  at  his  own  cost 
his  royal  palace,  the  famous  school  of  cosmography,  the  astro- 
nomical observatory,  and  the  naval  arsenal,  preserving,  im- 
proving, and  enlarging  the  same  till  the  close  of  his  life,  with 
admirable  energy  and  perseverance,  and  to  the  greatest  benefit 
of  the  kingdom,  of  literature,  of  religion,  and  of  the  whole 
human  race.  After  reaching  by  his  expeditions  the  eighth 
degree  of  north  latitude,  and  discovering  and  planting  Portuguese 
colonies  in  many  islands  of  the  Atlantic,  this  great  prince  died  on 
the  13th  of  November,  1460.  Three  hundred  and  seventy-nine 
years  after  his  death,  Maria  II.,  Queen  of  Portugal  and  the 
Algarves,  commanded  that  this  monument  should  be  erected  to 
the  memory  of  the  illustrious  Prince,  her  kinsman,  the  viscount  de 
Sa  da  Baudiera  being  Minister  of  Marine.  1839." 

The  monument  is  small  compared  with  the  importance  of 
the  man  in  whose  honor  it  was  erected.  But  all  America  is 
his  monument.  Australia  is  his  monument.  The  coasts  of 
India  and  the  numberless  islands  of  the  seas  speak  his  fame. 
Those  two  great  continents  and  those  innumerable  islands 
were  discovered  directly  in  consequence  of  the  labors  of 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  who  never  navigated. 

Some  readers  will  perhaps  be  glad  to  know  that  the  mother 
of  Prince  Henry  was  of  our  own  blood,  —  an  Englishwoman. 
For  my  part,  I  have  enough  of  the  vanity  of  race  to  think 
that  he  derived  much  of  his  peculiar  generosity  of  mind,  his 
public  spirit,  and  his  love  of  knowledge  from  the  noble 
English  mother  of  his,  Philippa,  daughter  of  the  valiant 
Prince  whom  Shakespeare  calls  w  Old  John  of  Gaunt,  time- 
honored  Lancaster."  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  Americans 
and  English  are,  upon  the  whole,  better  than  other  races  of 
human  beings ;  but  in  the  one  virtue  of  public  spirit,  a  heart- 
felt interest  in  the  public  welfare,  a  willingness  to  take  trou- 
ble and  spend  money  that  others  may  be  happy,  wise,  and 
good,  I  do  really  believe  that  we  are  not  surpassed  by  any 


480  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

other  people.  However  that  may  be,  the  fact  remains,  that 
the  mother  of  Prince  Henry  was  an  English  lady. 

Not  that  this  Prince  had  not  also  a  right  valiant  and 
worthy  father.  Five  centuries  have  passed  since  the  birth 
of  King  John  the  First  of  Portugal ;  but  to  this  day  he  is 
called  by  the  Portuguese  John  the  Great  and  King  John  the 
Father  of  his  Country.  And  with  much  reason  do  they  call 
him  by  the  latter  name.  When  the  Moors  had  been  driven 
to  a  safe  distance  from  the  frontiers,  it  was  this  King  John 
who  defended  Portugal  against  its  powerful  neighbor,  Cas- 
tile. In  his  fierce  and  desperate  war  against  the  King  of 
Castile,  he  won  victories  so  great  and  so  numerous  as  to 
secure  the  independence  of  his  country  against  its  Christian 
enemies,  as  his  brave  forefathers  had  against  its  Mahometan 
foes.  It  was  chiefly  owing  to  him  that  Portugal  has  been 
able,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  last  five  centuries,  to  hold  its 
own  against  the  powerful  kingdoms  near  it.  Spain  despises 
Portugal,  and  Portugal  hates  Spain;  but  if  this  contempt 
and  hatred  should  ever  again  cause  a  war  between  them,  the 
large  kingdom  will  not  be  able  to  absorb  the  little  one,  as 
long  as  Portugal  remembers  the  valor  of  King  John.  His 
tomb  defends  his  country  more  than  any  of  its  forts. 

The  marriage  between  King  John  and  the  Princess  Phi- 
lippa  took  place  February  2,  1387.  They  had  eight  children, 
all  of  whom  grew  up  except  two.  Prince  Henry,  called  The 
Navigator,  was  born  at  Oporto  on  the  4th  of  March,  1394. 
He  was  the  fifth  child  and  fourth  son  of  his  parents. 

While  these  princes  were  growing  up  to  manhood,  their 
father  was  busy  in  governing  and  defending  his  kingdom, 
and  consequently  the  care  of  the  family  devolved  chiefly 
upon  their  mother,  Queen  Philippa.  She  was  one  of  those 
women  whose  nature  it  is  to  be  a  blessing  to  every  one  con- 
nected with  them.  Her  whole  employment  was  to  do  good, 


INVENTION  OF  THE    COMPASS.  481 

and  in  nothing  did  she  so  much  delight  as  to  reconcile 
disputes,  and  change  enemies  into  friends.  She  was  not  like 
some  of  the  fine  ladies  of  the  present  day,  who  think  it  a 
great  shame  that  they  should  have  to  take  care  of  their 
households,  and  assist  in  rearing  their  children.  She  de- 
lighted in  those  great  duties.  She  felt  it  to  be  worthy  of  a 
queen  to  take  part  in  training  princes  who  were  one  day  to 
give  the  tone  to  the  manners  and  morals  of  the  kingdom ; 
nor  did  she  consider  it  beneath  her  to  attend  to  the  affairs  of 
the  dining-room  and  kitchen.  In  short,  she  was  a  thoroughly 
good  mother. 

In  Europe,  as  a  rule,  the  higher  the  rank  of  a  family,  the 
more  strictly  the  children  of  it  are  brought  up.  These  young 
princes,  besides  being  inured  to  hardship  as  young  soldiers, 
had  a  thorough  drilling  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  mathematics. 
The  two  elder  brothers,  we  are  told,  were  particularly  fond 
of  the  ancient  languages,  and  learned  to  write  very  well  in 
Latin,  as  well  as  in  Portuguese.  Prince  Henry,  however, 
preferred  mathematics,  astronomy,  geography,  and  other 
branches  which  are  particularly  useful  to  a  navigator.  All 
of  these  children  gave  great  promise  of  future  worth  and 
talent ;  and  they  acquired  in  their  youth,  not  only  a  great 
deal  of  knowledge,  but  that  love  of  knowledge,  that  eager 
curiosity  to  know,  which  makes  the  persons  who  are  so 
happy  as  to  have  it  students  and  observers  as  long  as  they 
live. 

Two  of  the  princes  began  about  1416  to  carry  out  the 
great  purpose  of  their  lives,  which  was  to  gain  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  wonderful  world  they  lived  in  than 
had  yet  been  obtained  by  any  one.  Pedro  sought  knowl- 
edge by  travelling  on  land,  and  Prince  Henry  from  the 
exploration  of  the  sea.  Prince  Pedro,  attended  by  twelve 
persons,  set  out  upon  a  journey  which  lasted  twelve  years, 


482  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

during  which  he  visited  his  royal  relatives  in  Castile,  France, 
and  England,  traversed  a  great  part  of  Europe,  and  probably 
parts  of  Asia  and  Africa.  No  account  of  this  remarkable 
journey  has  yet  been  published  in  Portugal,  though  I  can- 
not help  thinking  there  must  be  some  narrative  of  it  among 
the  manuscripts  in  which  that  country  abounds.  We  know 
little  more  of  it  than  that  he  returned  safe  and  sound,  after 
twelve  years'  travel ;  and  he  spent  the  rest  of  his  days  in 
assisting  his  brother  Henry  in  the  study  of  the  ocean. 

Prince  Henry  chose  the  sea,  and  the  unknown  lands  bor- 
dering upon  it,  for  his  object.  The  King  made  him  gover- 
nor of  Algarve,  the  most  southern  province  of  Portugal,  near 
the  extremity  of  which  is  Cape  Sagres,  described  above. 
On  that  promontory  the  Prince  built  a  mansion,  and  there  he 
went  to  reside,  having  no  other  motive  except  a  desire  to  be 
on  the  spot  most  convenient  for  carrying  out  his  design. 
Around  him  and  before  him  was  the  sea  which  he  wished  to 
explore,  and  near  by  was  the  port  of  Lagos  for  the  ships 
which  he  intended  to  employ.  At  his  abode  upon  Cape 
Sagres  he  gathered  a  considerable  number  of  the  young  nobil- 
ity of  the  kingdom,  for  whose  instruction  in  mathematics, 
navigation,  and  geography  he  invited  men  learned  in  those 
branches  to  come  and  live  in  his  palace,  to  whom  he  gave  a 
princely  welcome  and  liberal  support. 

A  little  town  grew  up  about  his  house,  which  the  people 
of  the  neighborhood  called  Villa  do  Infante,  or,  as  we  should 
style  it,  Princeton.  He  built  an  observatory,  a  church,  an 
arsenal,  and  a  library.  He  collected  books,  maps,  charts, 
compasses,  and  all  other  instruments  then  used  in  navigation. 
Surrounded  by  learned  men  and  learned  books,  by  young 
students  and  aged  instructors,  he  passed  a  long  life  upon 
this  promontory,  leaving  it  only  when  public  affairs  called 
him  away.  He  devoted  all  his  time,  all  his  talents,  all  his 


INVENTION  OF  THE   COMPASS.  483 

revenues,  and  all  his  influence  to  increasing  man's  knowledge 
of  the  planet  he  inhabits. 

His  chief  concern,  of  course,  was  the  sending  out  of  those 
ships  of  discovery  which  have  made  his  name  immortal.  For 
forty  years  he  made  a  practice  of  sending  out  a  ship  or  ships 
every  spring,  with  orders  to  sail  as  far  down  the  coast  of 
Africa  as  the  captains  could  make  the  crews  go,  and  to  bring 
back  to  him,  at  Cape  Sagres,  a  full  account  of  all  they  had 
seen  and  heard  during  the  voyage,  both  on  land  and  sea. 
This  was  the  chosen  business  of  his  life.  He  wisely  pre- 
ferred never  to  sail  on  these  expeditions  himself,  and  there- 
fore I  have  called  him  Prince  Henry,  the  Navigator  who 
never  navigated.  As  prince,  as  general,  as  master  of  the 
military  Order  of  Christ,  as  counsellor  to  the  King,  as  chief 
of  a  school  of  navigators,  he  had  duties  to  perform  which  kept 
him  at  home.  He  had  chosen  for  his  part  the  more  difficult 
and  less  popular  task  of  inspiring,  directing,  and  rewarding 
other  men,  and  keeping  up  that  steady  succession  of  endeav- 
ors, which  alone  could  have  accomplished  anything  great  in 
that  age.  Any  brave  man  might  make  a  successful  voyage. 
Prince  Henry's  post  was  on  the  lofty  height  of  Sagres, 
seeing  to  it  that  brave  men  went  forth  every  year  in  quest 
of  knowledge. 

It  was  he  who  began  the  movement  that  ended  in  the 
voyage  to  India,  and  the  discovery  of  a  new  continent. 


BEGINNING  OF  OCEAN  NAVIGATION. 

THE  DISCOVERY   OF  MADEIRA. 

I  HAVE  to  begin  with  a  love  story,  which  is  so  strange  and 
romantic  that  it  was  long  supposed  to  be  a  fiction.  But  it 
turns  out  to  be  true. 

More  than  four  hundred  years  ago,  —  a  century,  almost, 
before  the  discovery  of  America,  —  a  young  Englishman 
named  Robert  Machin  fell  in  love  with  a  nobleman's 
beautiful  daughter.  He  courted  her  and  won  her  affections. 
He  was  a  young  man  of  respectable  family,  but  of  a  rank  so 
inferior  to  that  of  the  young  lady  whom  he  loved,  that  her 
parents  could  not  think  of  permitting  her  to  marry  him. 
The  lover,  however,  was  known  to  be  resolute  and  brave, 
and  there  was  some  danger  of  his  carrying  her  off  from  her 
father's  castle.  So  the  nobleman  laid  the  matter  before  the 
king,  who  had  poor  Robert  Machin  put  in  prison,  and 
promised  to  keep  him  there  until  the  lady  should  be  safely 
married.  Her  parents  lost  no  time  in  marrying  her  to 
Lord  D'Arfet,  and  he,  as  soon  as  the  nuptial  knot  was  tied, 
took  her  with  him  to  his  country-seat  near  the  famous  sea- 
port of  Bristol. 

They  then  thought  the  young  lady  perfectly  safe,  and 
Robert  Machin  was  set  free.  But  as  he  was  a  young  fellow 
of  high  spirit,  he  was  angry  at  his  unjust  confinement,  and 
being  still  in  love  with  the  lady,  he  set  on  foot  a  plan  to 
gratify  at  once  his  revenge  and  his  passion.  To  Bristol  he 
went,  with  some  of  his  friends,  who  felt  that  he  had  been 


486  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

badly  treated,  and  were  determined  to  help  him.  One  of 
them,  putting  on  the  dress  and  manners  of  a  servant, 
obtained  employment  as  groom  in  the  family  of  Lord  D'Ar- 
fet,  and  it  thus  became  part  of  his  duty  to  attend  Lady 
D'Arfet  when  she  rode  out  into  the  country  on  horseback. 

Robert  Machin,  meanwhile,  got  ready  a  small  vessel,  on 
board  of  which  he  went.  The  gentleman  groom,  obtaining 
an  interview  with  Lady  D'Arfet  when  no  one  was  within 
hearing,  told  her  all  about  her  lover's  plan,  which  was  to 
take  her  with  him  in  the  vessel  and  sail  away  for  France, 
where  they  would  live  happily  together  all  their  lives.  The 
lady,  who  had  been  so  cruelly  separated  from  her  lover 
and  forced  to  marry  another  man,  willingly  consented ,  and 
nothing  remained  but  to  carry  the  scheme  into  execution. 

On  the  day  appointed,  early  in  the  afternoon,  she  ordered 
her  horse  to  be  saddled,  and  told  her  groom  to  get  ready  to 
attend  her,  as  she  was  going  alone.  She  mounted  her  horse 
and  rode  towards  the  banks  of  the  river  Avon,  near  where  it 
enters  the  Severn.  At  a  certain  spot  on  the  shore  a  small 
boat  was  waiting.  The  lady  and  groom  dismounted,  fas- 
tened their  horses  to  a  tree,  entered  the  boat,  and  were  con- 
veyed on  board  the  vessel,  where  the  lovers  had  a  joyful 
meeting  after  their  long  separation.  The  anchor  was 
instantly  hoisted ;  the  vessel  dropped  down  the  stream  into 
the  broad  Severn;  and,  spreading  all  her  sails,  was  soon 
beyond  sight  and  pursuit  in  the  Bristol  Channel. 

These  lovers,  in  order  to  clear  Land's  End,  had  to  go  a 
good  way  out  into  the  ocean,  and  then  turn  again  towards  the 
east  to  get  into  the  English  Channel,  and  so  land  on  the 
coast  of  France.  If  all  had  gone  well,  they  ought  to  have 
made  a  French  port  in  about  fifty  hours.  But  they  were 
destined  never  to  see  fair  France.  In  the  night  the  wind 
rose.  It  increased  to  a  tempest,  which  blew  them  far  out  into 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  487 

the  Atlantic.  When  the  day  dawned  they  found  themselves 
in  the  midst  of  a  tempestuous  ocean,  out  of  sight  of  land,  and 
with  no  pilot  on  board  who  knew  enough  of  navigation  to 
guide  the  ship  towards  a  port.  It  is  not  likely  that  they  had 
so  much  as  a  compass  on  board,  for  compasses  were  not  then 
in  general  use,  and  every  vessel  kept  as  close  to  the  shore 
as  possible. 

All  day  the  tempest  raged.  The  wind  came  out  of  the 
northeast,  and  therefore  blew  them  towards  the  southwest, 
past  the  Scilly  Isles,  past  the  jutting  northwest  corner  of 
France,  and  down  past  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  Day  after  day 
they  could  only  scud  before  the  wind ;  and  they  were  driven 
down  by  Spain,  past  the  long  line  of  the  Portuguese  coast, 
and  still  farther  south,  until  they  were  off  the  unknown  coast 
of  Africa.  For  thirteen  days  they  were  driven  before  this 
merciless  gale.  But  at  last  it  died  away,  and  they  tossed 
about  all  one  night  on  those  great  waves  which  continue  to 
heave  long  after  a  storm  has  subsided. 

The  morning  of  the  fourteenth  day  dawned.  Away 
towards  the  south  the  sailors  fancied  they  saw  a  low  dark 
line  upon  the  sea  that  looked  like  land.  The  sun  rose.  It 
was  land !  Trees  were  soon  discerned,  and  several  kinds 
of  birds  which  they  had  never  seen  before  came  from  the 
land,  and  perched  in  the  rigging  without  showing  any  fear. 

As  soon  as  they  were  near  enough,  a  boat  was  hoisted  out, 
and  several  of  the  adventurers  went  on  shore,  wondering 
what  country  this  could  be,  and  doubtless  not  without  fear 
that  they  might  have  come  to  the  land  of  the  infidels,  and 
might  be  made  slaves.  When  they  stepped  on  shore,  a 
beautiful  prospect  opened  before  them,  of  hills  and  valleys, 
of  dense  forests,  and  streams  of  fresh  water.  No  inhabitants 
appeared,  and  no  animals  except  such  as  were  small  and 
harmless. 

31 


488  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

Returning  on  board  the  vessel,  the  sailors  gave  such  a 
favorable  account  of  the  land  that  the  lovers  too  came  on 
shore.  Walking  into  the  interior,  they  came  at  last  to  a 
pleasant  hill,  upon  the  summit  of  which  there  was  a  large 
and  most  beautiful  tree,  affording  delicious  shade  from  the 
heat  of  the  sun.  The  spot  was  so  agreeable  that  they  deter- 
mined to  live  there  for  a  while,  and  rest  after  the  fatigues 
and  terrors  of  their  voyage.  So  they  cut  large  boughs  from 
the  tree,  and  made  some  bowers,  in  which  they  slept  at 
night.  In  the  daytime  they  roamed  about  the  country,  ob- 
serving its  curious  trees,  plants,  stones,  birds,  and  insects, 
always  wondering  where  they  were,  and  to  whom  this 
curious  and  beautiful  land  belonged.  Part  of  the  company, 
especially  the  sailors,  continued  to  live  on  board  the  vessel, 
while  the  lovers  and  their  friends  remained  on  shore. 

Three  days  passed  pleasantly  enough.  In  the  afternoon 
of  the  third  day  a  gale  sprung  up  from  the  northeast,  which 
increased  during  the  night.  When  the  lovers  and  their 
friends  rose  in  the  morning,  they  looked  most  anxiously  to 
see  how  it  had  fared  with  their  little  vessel,  upon  which 
depended  their  only  chance  of  ever  again  living  in  a  Chris- 
tian land. 

She  was  gone !  The  storm  had  driven  her  from  her 
anchorage,  and  no  trace  of  her  could  be  seen  on  the  ocean, 
which  was  covered  with  white-crested  waves. 

It  was  a  terrible  blow.  The  poor  lady,  whose  health,  had 
been  shattered  by  the  agonizing  perils  of  the  voyage,  upon 
seeing  herself  cut  off  forever  from  home  and  country  and 
friends,  was  struck  dumb  with  horror.  In  three  days  she 
breathed  her  last,  and  they  buried  her  under  the  beautiful 
tree. 

Robert  Machin  could  not  be  comforted.  He  lingered  five 
days,  and  then  died,  beseeching  his  comrades  to  bury  his 


BEGINNING  OF   OCEAN   NAVIGATION.  489 

body  in  the  same  grave  with  hers.  His  last  request  was 
complied  with,  and  over  the  grave  of  the  lovers  was  set  up 
a  large  wooden  cross,  and  near  by  an  inscription  was  placed 
which  gave  an  account  of  their  coming  to  this  unknown  land, 
and  concluded  with  a  prayer,  addressed  to  any  Christian 
who  might  ever  come  to  the  spot,  asking  them  to  build  a 
church, upon  that  hill,  and  dedicate  it  to  Jesus  the  Saviour. 

The  land  upon  which  these  unhappy  lovers  were  driven 
was  the  beautiful  island  of  Madeira.  The  part  of  the  coast 
where  their  vessel  anchored  was  named  by  subsequent  ex- 
plorers Machico,  after  Machin,  and  this  name  it  retains  to 
the  present  hour.  The  island  had  been  seen,  and  perhaps 
visited,  several  years  before,  but  it  had  never  been  settled, 
and  its  existence  was  only  known  to  a  few  persons  very 
learned  in  geography. 

After  the  death  of  Eobert  Machin,  his  companions,  in 
haste  to  leave  the  fatal  spot,  set  sail  for  England  in  their 
small  boat ;  but  they  were  driven  before  a  northeasterly 
wind,  and  thrown  upon  the  coast  of  Morocco,  where  they 
were  captured  by  the  Moors,  and  sent  to  prison.  What  was 
their  astonishment  to  find  in  this  prison  the  crew  of  the 
vessel  in  which  they  had  sailed  from  England.  It  had  been 
borne  by  the  gale  to  the  same  coast  I 

In  those  times  the  Moors  derived  great  profit  from  the 
Christian  prisoners  whom  they  captured  on  land  and  sea. 
It  seems  as  if  almost  every  ship  was  a  kind  of  pirate  then, 
and  almost  all  captains  thought  it  right  to  capture  a  ship 
that  was  smaller  than  their  own.  Certainly,  no  Moor  had 
any  scruples  about  capturing  a  ship  owned  and  manned  by 
Christians ;  and,  consequently,  all  along  the  coast  of 
Morocco  there  were  jails  filled  with  Christian  captives,  who 
were  kept  until  they  were  ransomed  by  their  friends  or 
country. 


490  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Common  sailors  and  poor  people  were  generally  sold  as 
slaves  as  soon  as  they  were  brought  on  shore ;  but  captains, 
merchants,  and  passengers  of  rank  were  usually  kept  in  con- 
finement until  they  were  ransomed.  All  over  Europe,  but 
especially  at  seaports,  there  used  to  be  collections  taken  in 
churches  for  the  ransom  of  Christian  captives  in  Morocco. 
It  was  a  custom  also  for  rich  people  to  leave  money  in  their 
wills  for  this  purpose,  and  there  were  some  orders  of 
monks  who  went  about  begging  money  for  the  ransom 
of  Christian  captives.  There  were  also  societies  of  ladies 
and  others,  who  used  to  make  costly  articles  of  needle-work, 
and  sell  them  for  the  benefit  of  captives  who  had  no  friends 
rich  enough  to  pay  their  ransom.  It  is  necessary  to  bear 
this  in  mind  in  order  to  understand  how  it  came  to  pass  that 
the  sad  adventure  of  Robert  Machin  and  Lady  D'Arfet  led  to 
the  real  discovery  and  settlement  of  the  Island  of  Madeira. 

For  some  years  the  friends  of  Machin  languished  in  a 
Moorish  prison,  with  hundreds  of  other  unhappy  captives, 
longing  for  the  hour  of  their  deliverance.  Among  other 
persons  confined  with  them  was  a  certain  John  de  Morales, 
a  skilful  and  famous  Spanish  pilot  and  navigator.  To  him 
they  naturally  told  the  strange  tale  of  the  unhappy  lovers, 
and  described  the  beautiful  land  where  they  had  died.  Now, 
Captain  de  Morales,  being  an  experienced  navigator  and  a 
good  geographer  for  that  day,  listened  with  intense  curiosity 
to  their  descriptions  of  the  unknown  country,  and,  I  have  no 
doubt,  questioned  them  closely  as  to  the  direction  in  which 
it  lay,  and  how  many  miles  it  was  from  the  coast.  Prisoners 
have  not  many  kinds  of  amusement  at  their  command,  and 
we  may  be  quite  sure  that  this  good  Spanish  pilot  heard  the 
lovers'  story  over  and  over  again,  and  longed  to  be  free  that 
he  might  join  once  more  in  the  exploration  of  the  ocean. 

The  time  arrived  at  last.     In  the  year  1416  died  Prince 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN   NAVIGATION.  491 

Sancho,  the  youngest  son  of  the  King  of  Aragon,  and  left  a 
large  sum  of  money  for  the  ransom  of  Spanish  captives  in 
Morocco.  Accordingly,  a  ship  was  sent  from  Spain  to  a 
port  in  Morocco,  where  she  was  soon  filled  with  captives 
rejoicing  in  their  deliverance,  and  in  the  expectation  of , soon 
seeing  again  their  friends  and  country. 

The  happiest  people  in  the  world  are  those  just  let  out  of 
prison  after  long  confinement.  I  remember,  during  the  war, 
coming  home  from  the  army  once  in  a  flag-of-truce  boat, 
upon  which  were  three  hundred  and  fifty  wounded  officers 
and  soldiers  released  from  prison  in  Richmond  after  a  con- 
finement of  several  months.  They  were  so  happy  that  the 
least  thing  made  them  giggle  like  school-girls  ;  and  although 
most  of  them  had  to  be  carried  on  board  the  steamboat,  yet, 
after  being  on  board  thirty  hours,  they  were  well  enough, 
when  the  boat  reached  Annapolis,  and  the  band  on  the 
wharf  struck  up  Hail  Columbia,  to  walk  on  shore  and  toddle 
off  to  the  hospital.  Of  course  the  good  food  they  had  on 
the  boat,  and  the  kind  treatment  they  received,  had  much 
to  do  with  this  sudden  cure.  But,  after  all,  the  medicine 
which  really  restored  them  was  the  joy  of  being  among 
friends  once  more,  and  of  knowing  that  they  were  going 
home. 

The  Spanish  ship  full  of  captives  sailed  away  from 
Morocco,  and  had  got  as  far  as  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar, 
when,  O  horror !  three  Portuguese  vessels  came  in  sight ; 
and  in  another  hour  they  were  all  prisoners  again  ! 

Not  that  Spain  and  Portugal  were  at  war ;  but  the  two 
kings  of  those  countries,  we  are  told  by  the  old  chroniclers, 
had  had  "  a  little  misunderstanding,"  and  so  the  commander 
of  the  Portuguese  fleet  felt  perfectly  justified  in  taking  all 
these  poor  captives  prisoners  again.  Imagine  their  feelings 
upon  their  hopes  being  so  suddenly  and  bitterly  disap- 


492  TRIUMPHS  OF  ENTERPRISE. 

pointed.  Luckily  for  them,  the  Portuguese  commodore  was 
a  kind-hearted  man,  as  well  as  a  good  Catholic,  and  there- 
fore, taking  pity  upon  them,  he  gave  up  their  ship  and  let 
them  go,  — all  except  one  man. 

That  one  man  was  the  good  Spanish  pilot,  John  de 
Morales,  of  whom  I  have  spoken  above.  And,  strange  to 
say,  De  Morales  was  perfectly  willing  to  go  with  the  Portu- 
guese, instead  of  returning  to  Seville,  where  he  lived.  Now, 
in  order  to  understand  this  mystery,  we  must  know  who 
those  Portuguese  were  that  were  crossing  the  Straits  of 
Gibraltar,  and  whence  they  had  come,  and  whither  they 
were  going.  And  now  we  have  another  curious  story, 
almost  as  strange  as  that  of  the  two  English  lovers. 

In  a  former  article,  I  said  something  about  Prince  Henry, 
the  navigator  who  never  navigated,  and  how  he  settled  upon 
the  promontory  of  Sagres,  and  built  a  mansion  there,  and 
intended  to  devote  all  his  life  and  all  his  money  to  sending 
out  ships  to  discover  what  land  there  was  beyond  the  coun- 
try of  the  Moors.  Every  summer  he  sent  out  two  or  three 
vessels,  which  crept  along  down  the  African  coast,  each 
captain  satisfied  if  only  he  went  a  few  miles  farther  south 
than  any  one  else  had  gone. 

Two  or  three  summers  were  employed  in  this  way  before 
anything  very  interesting  was  found  out ;  but  in  the  summer 
of  1418  a  most  important  discovery  was  made.  In  that 
year  two  brave  young  knights  of  Prince  Henry's  household, 
named  Zarco  and  Vaz,  who  had  fought  valiantly  under  him 
at  Ceuta,  entreated  him  to  let  them  try  their  fortune  in 
exploring  the  terrible  African  coast.  The  Prince  consent- 
ing, they  crossed  the  straits,  and  went  carefully  along  the 
coast  for  some  little  distance,  — perhaps  two  hundred  miles, 
—  when  a  terrible  storm  rose,  which  blew  them  right  out  to 
sea.  Of  course  they  gave  themselves  up  for  lost ;  but  when 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN   NAVIGATION.  493 

the  storm  abated,  they  came  in  sight  of  an  island,  six  or 
seven  miles  long  and  three  wide.  This  was  Porto  Santo, 
an  island  twenty-five  miles  to  the  northeast  of  Madeira, 
three  hundred  and  eighty  miles  from  Africa,  and  six  hundred 
and  sixty  miles  from  their  native  Portugal. 

After  gazing  at  this  island  awhile  they  ventured  on  shore, 
fearing  it  might  be  inhabited  by  warlike  savages  like  those 
who  lived  upon  the  Canaries.  Great  was  their  joy  to  find 
that  it  was  not  inhabited  at  all.  Upon  discovering  this  they 
put  on  board  their  vessel  specimens  of  its  stones,  shells, 
woods,  and  plants,  and  made  all  sail  to  convey  the  great 
news  to  Prince  Henry ;  knowing  what  a  great  help  it  would 
be  to  him,  in  exploring  unknown  regions,  to  have  this  fine 
island  for  the  repair  and  supply  of  his  ships. 

The  Prince  was,  indeed,  overjoyed.  It  was  his  first 
success,  and,  that  success  being  accidental,  he  regarded  it 
as  the  direct  blessing  of  Heaven  upon  his  labors,  and  a 
divine  command  to  continue  them.  He  fitted  out  three 
vessels,  filled  them  with  implements,  seeds,  and  other  mate- 
rials, placed  them  under  the  command  of  the  discoverers, 
and  another  knight,  named  Perestello,  and  sent  them  to 
plant  and  settle  the  island.  Perestello  was  to  govern  the 
colony,  and  Zarco  and  Yaz  were  to  return  with  their  vessels 
to  Portugal. 

A  curious  thing  happened  to  this  colony,  which  is  all  that 
I  can  here  relate  respecting  the  adventures  of  Perestello. 
On  the  voyage  out  a  tame  rabbit  on  board  of  Perestello's 
ship  had  young  ones,  which  with  the  mother  were  turned 
loose  upon  the  island  of  Porto  Santo.  These  rabbits 
increased  so  fast  that  the  whole  island  was  soon  overrun 
with  them.  They  devoured  everything  which  the  colonists 
planted,  and  proved  so  great  an  evil  that,  after  contending 
with  these  little  enemies  and  other  misfortunes  for  two 


494  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

years,  Perestello  gave  up  the  struggle  and  went  home  to 
Portugal.  He  returned  to  the  island,  however,  soon  after, 
at  the  request  of  Prince  Henry,  and  succeeded  at  last  in 
founding  a  colony.  But  they  had  terrible  work  with  the  rab- 
bits. So  numerous  were  the  little  creatures  that  as  many 
as  two  thousand  were  destroyed  in  one  day,  and  it  was  all 
the  colonists  could  do  for  a  while  to  keep  them  under. 

But  to  return  to  the  gallant  knights,  Zarco  and  Vaz.  I 
must  relate  how  they  became  acquainted  with  the  Spanish 
pilot,  John  de  Morales. 

In  1420  Prince  Henry  fitted  out  another  fleet  of  three 
small  vessels,  and  placed  them  under  the  command  of 
Zarco,  Vaz  being  one  of  his  captains.  This  was  the  fleet 
which,  in  crossing  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  fell  in  with  the 
Spanish  ship  that  was  loaded  with  captives.  The  pilot  De 
Morales  told  the  Portuguese  the  interesting  story  of  the 
English  lovers,  described  the  beautiful  land  to  which  they 
had  been  driven,  and  offered  his  services  in  attempting  to 
rediscover  it.  Zarco,  knowing  the  fame  of  De  Morales  as  a 
pilot,  accepted  this  offer,  and,  having  dismissed  the  Spanish 
ship  and  her  load  of  captives,  sailed  back  to  Prince  Henry 
with  the  precious  intelligence  thus  obtained. 

How  eagerly  that  gallant  and  intelligent  Prince  listened  to 
the  tale  of  the  lovers,  and  to  the  description  of  the  country 
they  had  found,  as  given  him  by  John  de  Morales  !  His 
resolve  was  instantly  taken.  He  sent  Zarco  and  De  Mora- 
les to  Lisbon  to  tell  the  same  strange  story  to  the  King,  his 
father,  and  to  ask  the  King's  assistance  in  fitting  out  a 
larger  vessel  than  the  Prince  could  afford,  for  the-  purpose 
of  striking  out  boldly  into  the  ocean  in  search  of  the  un- 
known land. 

At  court  the  two  navigators  did  not  succeed  very  well. 
Some  of  the  noblemen  about  the  King  objected  to  spending 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  495 

so  much  money  for  such  a  purpose,  saying  that  in  Portugal 
there  was  plenty  of  waste  land,  and  that  there  was  no  need 
of  sending  ships  roaming  about  the  ocean  in  quest  of  more. 
"Besides,"  said  they,  "are  there  not  widows  enough  already 
in  Portugal,  that  we  should  send  more  sailors  to  find  a  grave 
in  the  deep  ?  " 

The  Prince,  hearing  of  these  objections,  mounted  his 
horse,  and,  accompanied  by  a  few  of  his  knights,  went  him- 
self to  Lisbon,  and  talked  the  matter  over  with  the  King. 
All  difficulties  melted  away  in  the  presence  of  this  enthusi- 
astic Prince ;  and  soon  Zarco,  Vaz,  and  De  Morales,  with  a 
brave  company  of  knights  and  mariners,  put  to  sea  in  a  stout 
ship  of  the  Portuguese  navy,  attended  by  an  oared  galley. 
They  were  to  touch  first  at  Porto  Santo,  little  thinking  that 
that  island  was  only  twenty-five  miles  from  the  land  of  which 
they  were  in  search,  —  the  land  where  the  two  lovers  reposed 
side  by  side  under  their  beautiful  tree. 

A  few  days  of  pleasant  sailing  brought  them  to  Porto 
Santo,  where  the  adventurers  landed  for  a  short  period  of 
repose  before  letting  out  in  search  of  the  land  unknown. 
Perestello  had  not  yet  returned,  and  the  island  was  still 
peopled  only  by  his  enemies  the  rabbits.  Zarco  and  Vaz, 
however,  and  several  of  their  comrades  were  familiar  with  the 
island,  and  pointed  out  to  De  Morales  the  curiosities  they 
remembered. 

Among  other  things,  Zarco  called  the  attention  of  the 
Spanish  pilot  to  a  strange  appearance  on  the  horizon,  far 
away  to  the  southwest,  which  he  had  noticed  on  his  first 
visit,  and  which  had  been  often  spoken  of  among  Perestello's 
colonists.  A  thick  darkness  hung  over  the  sea  like  a  huge 
black  cloud.  But  it  could  not  be  a  cloud,  for  it  never  grew 
less,  nor  larger ;  and  the  clearer  the  sky  was,  the  plainer  it 
was  seen. 


496  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTEEPEISE. 

A  strange  natural  object  is  apt  to 'be  a  terrible  one.  Some 
of  those  simple  souls  thought  the  dark  object  was  the  smoky 
mouth  of  a  bottomless  abyss  ;  others  supposed  it  to  be  the 
horrid  entrance  into  hell ;  and  a  few  of  the  more  intelligent 
maintained  that  it  was  a  mysterious  island,  forever  hidden 
under  a  veil  of  cloud,  to  which  the  Christian  saints  and 
bishops  who  had  escaped  from  Moorish  prisons  had  been 
miraculously  conveyed,  and  where  they  were  now  living  in  a 
heaven  upon  earth. 

But  the  bold  De  Morales  believed  none  of  these  things. 
He  looked  fearlessly  upon  that  dark  appearance  in  the  south- 
western sky. 

"  It  is  the  land  we  are  in  search  of,"  said  he. 

And  he  held  fast  to  this  opinion,  and  convinced  several  of 
his  comrades  of  its  truth.  The  whole  company  gathered  to 
consult  upon  the  matter,  and  they  agreed  at  last  that  they 
would  wait  until  the  moon  changed,  and  see  what  effect  that 
would  have  upon  the  cloud.  The  moon  changed ;  but  the 
cloud  remained  motionless,  vast,  and  dark  as  before.  Upon 
perceiving  this,  a  panic  seized  them,  and  they  would  have 
hurried  on  board  ship,  and  made  all  sail  for  home,  but  for 
the  firmness  and  good  sense  of  the  Spanish  pilot.  He 
declared  again  and  again  that,  according  to  what  the  Eng- 
lishmen had  told  him,  the  lovers'  land  could  not  be  far  off. 
They  told  him,  he  said,  that  the  soil  of  that  unknown  coun- 
try was  shaded  by  lofty  trees,  standing  close  together,  which 
alone,  he  thought,  would  cause  a  vapor  continually  to  rise, 
and  that  vapor  would  naturally  spread  over  the  sky,  and 
take  the  appearance  of  a  great  cloud. 

Frightened  men  are  hard  to  convince.  In  all  the  com- 
pany there  was  only  one  man  who  remained  of  the  pilot's  opin- 
ion; but  that  man  was  Zarco,  commander  of  the  expedition. 
So,  one  morning,  without  telling  anybody  but  the  pilot 


BEGINNING  OF  OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  497 

where  he  was  going,  Zarco  ordered  all  hands  aboard,  got  up 
the  anchor,  and,  crowding  all  sail,  stood  straight  for  the 
mysterious  cloud. 

The  reader  is  aware  that  the  Island  of  Madeira  is  little 
more  than  a  huge  volcanic  mountain,  the  highest  point  of 
which  is  six  thousand  one  hundred  feet  high ;  and  this  moun- 
tain, as  just  remarked,  was  then  covered  with  enormous 
trees.  Of  course,  then,  the  nearer  these  poor  trembling 
sailors  got  to  the  island,  the  more  awful  it  looked ;  and  when 
at  last  they  were  near  enough  to  hear  the  roaring  of  the 
sea,  as  it  broke  upon  the  rocky  shore,  some  of  them  fell 
upon  their  knees,  others  cried  out  in  an  agony  of  terror,  and 
many  gathered  round  the  captain,  entreating  him  to  change 
his  course  and  save  them  from  destruction. 

Happily,  the  commander  was  a  man  of  courage.  He  made 
a  speech  to  the  panic-stricken  sailors,  giving  them  good 
reasons  for  believing  that  behind  that  veil  of  dark  mist  there 
was  solid  land,  and  no  abyss  at  all.  Not  venturing  yet  to 
go  close  in,  they  sailed  for  some  distance,  every  eye  fixed 
intently  upon  the  huge  unknown  object.  Some  of  the  sailors 
declared  that  they  saw  through  the  gloom  giants  of  awful 
stature,  which  they  found  afterwards  were  only  high  rocks 
upon  the  shore.  Erelong  they  came  to  a  point  which 
plainly  was  nothing  else  than  land ;  and,  thus  encouraged, 
they  stood  in  closer,  and  it  was  soon  apparent  to  all  that 
land  was  before  them. 

An  hour  or  two  after  they  came  to  a  bay  which,  the 
pilot  said,  was  exactly  such  a  bay  as  the  Englishmen 
had  described;  and  there  he  went  ashore.  Upon  walk- 
ing a  little  way  into  the  interior,  the  brave  pilot  was 
overwhelmed  with  joy  to  discover  the  tree-crowned  hill 
upon  which  the  lovers  had  died;  and  upon  its  summit 
he  found  the  tomb,  the  tall  wooden  cross,  the  inscription, 


498  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

and  all  the  other  marks  which  his  fellow-captives  in  Mo- 
rocco had  mentioned. 

Exulting  in  this  discovery,  he  hurried  on  board  the  large 
ship,  and  told  the  news  to  Zarco  and  Vaz,  who  instantly 
came  on  shore,  and  took  possession  of  the  country  in  the 
joint  names  of  King  John  and  Prince  Henry. 

Need  I  say  that  they  were  enchanted  with  their  discovery  ? 
They  had  found  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  all  the  islands 
in  the  world,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  productive,  —  an 
island  where  an  invalid  can  sleep  out-of-doors  almost  every 
night  of  the  year,  and  where  the  heat  of  the  sun  is  .most 
agreeably  tempered  by  breezes  from  the  sea.  So  productive 
was  the  soil  there  that  it  yielded  sixty-fold,  and  the  bunches 
of  grapes  were  formerly  two  or  three  spans  long,  and  some- 
times four. 

After  exploring  the  island  a  little,  the  adventurers  sailed 
for  Portugal,  eager  to  convey  such  glorious  news  to  their 
beloved  Prince.  He  was  the  happiest  of  men,  and  at  once 
set  about  planting  and  settling  the  land.  Dividing  it  into 
two  unequal  parts,  he  made  Zarco  lord  of  the  larger,  and  Vaz 
of  the  smaller.  He  freighted  vessels  with  vine-cuttings, 
plants,  vegetables,  seeds,  and  tools,  and  sent  great  numbers 
of  men  and  some  families  to  possess  and  people  the  island. 

The  first  settlers,  it  appears,  had  great  difficulty  on  account 
of  the  dense  forests  with  which  the  island  was  covered.  In 
fact,  the  island  was  named  Madeira  (which  means  timber) , 
from  the  enormous  quantity  of  the  wood  upon  it.  At  last, 
one  of  the  settlers,  thinking  to  make  short  work  of  the  for- 
est, set  it  on  fire,  and,  the  season  being  dry,  the  fire  raged 
with  such  violence  that  Captain  Zarco  and  all  his  family,  it 
is  said,  were  obliged  to  wade  out  into  the  sea,  and  remain 
up  to  their  necks  in  water  for  two  days  and  two  nights.  The 
old  historians  also  say  that  this  fire  continued  to  burn  for 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN   NAVIGATION.  499 

seven  years.  The  ground  was  indeed  cleared  by  the  fire, 
but  Prince  Henry,  when  he  heard  of  it,  regretted  very  much 
the  loss  of  so  much  good  timber. 

Before  the  island  had  been  settled  long,  a  boy  was  born  in 
it,  whom  his  father  named  Adam.  The  next  child  born  hap- 
pened to  be  in  the  same  family,  and  her  parents  named  her 
Eve.  On  the  hill  where  the  lovers  were  buried  Zarco 
immediately  erected  an  altar,  and  after  a  few  years  he  built 
a  church  upon  the  spot,  in  the  choir  of  which  he  placed  their 
bodies. 

As  to  the  grape- cuttings  which  Prince  Henry  sent  to  be 
planted  in  Madeira,  they  took  root  and  flourished  exceed- 
ingly, and  have  supplied  the  world  ever  since  with  an  impor- 
tant part  of  its  wine.  It  is  agreed,  I  believe,  that  the  best 
Madeira  is  the  best  wine  the  earth  produces.  Another  inter- 
esting fact  is,  that  the  family  of  Zarco  still  exists  in  Portugal. 
I  am  informed  that  Madam  da  Camara,  the  governess  of  the 
present  Queen  of  Portugal,  is  a  lineal  descendant  of  the 
brave  man  who  commanded  the  expedition  that  discovered 
Madeira. 

Encouraged  by  the  discovery  of  the  Madeira  Islands  in 
1420,  the  noble  Prince  put  forth  greater  efforts  than  ever. 
In  1424  he  prepared  a  grand  expedition  of  twenty-five  hun- 
dred foot-soldiers  and  a  hundred  and  twenty  horse-soldiers 
for  the  conquest  of  the  Canary  Islands,  which  were  inhabited 
by  innocent,  good-tempered,  but  brave  and  warlike  savages. 
But  it  was  not  clear  at  the  time  to  whom  the  group  belonged, 
and  the  Prince  was  very  reluctant  to  spend  in  mere  fighting 
a  great  sum  of  money  which  would  go  so  much  farther  in 
discovering  new  lands  and  seas.  So  he  put  off  this  enter- 
prise, and  the  natives  of  those  islands  continued  for  twenty 
years  longer  to  live  in  peace,  and  the  Prince  had  more  time 
and  money  to  spend  in  colonizing  and  planting  Madeira. 


500  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Yon  have  forgotten  that  Prince  Pedro,  the  brother  of 
Prince  Henry,  set  out  upon  his  travels,  and  was  gone  twelve 
years.  In  1428  he  returned,  bringing  with  him  a  great  store 
of  knowledge,  and  several  new  books  and  maps,  which  he 
had  gathered  in  distant  cities.  Among  his  maps  there  was 
one  upon  which  the  group  of  islands  now  called  the  Azores, 
that  lie  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  eight  hundred  miles  west  of 
Portugal,  were  distinctly  marked.  Prince  Henry,  after  he 
had  obtained  possession  of  this  precious  map,  never  rested 
content  until  he  had  found  out  whether  there  really  were 
such  islands  out  there  in  the  broad  Atlantic. 

So  in  1431  he  fitted  out  a  vessel,  placed  it  in  command  of 
a  nobleman  named  Cabral,  and  sent  him  in  search  of  those 
islands.  The  first  attempt  to  find  them  was  a  failure  ;  but 
Prince  Henry  never  thought  of  giving  up  a  search  of  this 
kind  even  after  ten  failures.  The  next  summer  he  sent 
Cabral  again,  who  cruised  about  in  the  Atlantic  until  he  dis- 
covered one  island  of  the  group,  which  he  named  Santa 
Maria,  a  name  which  it  bears  to  this  day.  As  this  was  a  fine, 
large,  fertile  island,  Prince  Henry  at  once  set  about  coloniz- 
ing it,  giving  the  direction  of  the  colony  to  Cabral,  who  suc- 
ceeded in  settling  upon  it  several  families,  descendants  of 
whom  are  now  living  there. 

For  several  years  no  one  supposed  that  there  were  any 
islands  near  Santa  Maria.  But,  one  day,  a  runaway  slave  in 
Santa  Maria,  who  had  been  living  in  the  mountains  for  some 
time,  came  into  the  settlement,  gave,  himself  up  to  his  mas- 
ter, and  told  him  something  which  he  hoped  would  secure 
his  pardon  and  perhaps  his  freedom.  He  said  that  on  a  clear 
day,  from  the  top  of  the  highest  mountain  on  the  island,  he 
had  seen,  far  away  to  the  north,  another  island.  Some  of 
the  colonists  went  to  the  spot,  found  that  the  slave  had 
spoken  the  truth,  and  sent  word  to  Prince  Henry.  It  so 


BEGINNING   OP   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  501 

happened  that  Cabral  was  with  the  Prince  when  this  news 
reached  him,  and  he  was  immediately  ordered  to  go  in 
search  of  the  new  island.  The  first  time  he  missed  it,  and 
the  Prince  explained  to  him  from  the  chart  that  he  had  prob- 
ably passed  between  Santa  Maria  and  the  new  island.  The 
next  time  he  found  it,  and  a  very  fine  island  it  proved  to  be, 
which  the  Prince  also  planted  and  settled.  The  rest  of  the 
group  gradually  came  to  light,  and  they  were  named  Azores 
(which  means  hawks),  because  so  many  birds  resembling 
hawks  were  found  upon  them. 

Thus,  by  the  year  1432,  three  of  the  groups  of  islands  in 
the  Atlantic  Ocean  were  known  and  partly  settled.  These 
were  the  Canaries,  the  Madeiras,  and  the  Azores,  the  last 
two  of  which  groups  were  rediscovered  and  colonized  by 
the  brave  navigators  who  sailed  in  the  service  of  Prince 
Henry.  Besides  this,  his  captains  had  sailed  down  the  coast 
of  Africa  as  far  as  the  Great  Desert,  which  begins  at  a  point 
about  seven  hundred  miles  from  Cape  Sagres,  on  which  the 
Prince  lived.  Such  were  the  results  of  about  fifteen  years' 
exploration.  During  all  that  time  Prince  Henry  had  sent 
out  a  small  vessel  or  two  every  summer,  and  this  was  what 
he  had  accomplished. 

And  now  many  of  his  friends  supposed,  and  perhaps  he 
thought  himself,  that  his  discoveries  were  at  an  end.  There 
was  a  lion  in  the  path,  a  terrible  roaring  lion,  more  awful 
to  the  imagination  of  the  credulous  mariners  of  that  day 
than  we  can  conceive.  This  was  nothing  less  than  the  terri- 
ble Cape  Bojador,  a  promontory  which  thrust  itself  out  into 
the  Atlantic  Ocean  from  the  coast  of  the  Great  Desert,  just 
below  the  most  southern  of  the  Canary  Islands.  This  cape 
cuts  a  poor  figure  on  our  maps  ;  it  hardly  shows  at  all ;  but 
for  a  century  it  was  an  object  of  such  terror  to  sailors  that 
none  of  them  thought  it  possible  for  any  vessel  navigated  by 


502  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

mortals  to  go  beyond  it.  It  was  supposed  to  run  out  into 
the  sea  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  and  away  out  beyond  the 
cape  there  were  reefs,  upon  which  the  waves  of  the  Atlantic 
broke  and  thundered  and  foamed  eternally. 

This  awful  cape  was  supposed  to  be,  for  all  the  purposes 
of  man,  the  end  of  the  world.  With  regard  to  what  there 
might  be  south  of  it  sailors  had  different  conjectures.  Some 
thought  that  the  waters  of  the  seas  on  the  other  side  of  Cape 
Bojador  grew  hotter  and  hotter  until  they  boiled,  and  that 
consequently  the  ocean  there  was  too  shallow  for  navigation. 
It  was  generally  believed  that  white  people  could  not  live 
in  the  tropics  for  any  time  without  turning  as  black  as 
negroes,  and  remaining  so  for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 

Now,  in  truth,  to  sailors  creeping  timidly  down  along  the 
African  coast,  this  harmless  Cape  Bojador  might  well  have 
seemed  terrible.  It  does  extend  some  miles  out  into  the 
ocean,  and  there  is  a  reef  of  rocks  lying  low  in  the  water 
three  or  four  miles  beyond  it;  and,  both  upon  the  shore  of 
the  cape  and  upon  the  rocky  reef,  the  mighty  waves  of  the 
Atlantic  do  break  and  foam  and  thunder  in  the  sublimest 
manner.  As  you  approach  the  cape  from  the  north,  the 
sand  of  the  shore  and  of  the  cliffs  above  it  has  a  reddish 
hue,  which  probably  added  to  the  terrors  of  the  scene  in 
those  simple  old  days.  At  present,  when  sailors  keep  as 
far  from  land  as  possible,  this  cape  is  not  terrible  at  all,  and 
few  sailors  ever  see  it  or  know  anything  about  it.  Indeed, 
I  have  had  much  trouble  in  finding  out  what  sort  of  a  cape 
it  really  is. 

By  this  time,  as  you  may  imagine,  Prince  Henry  put  very 
little  faith  in  the  tales  which  mariners  brought  him  of  the 
terrors  of  the  sea ;  and  he  had  long  been  satisfied  that  a  man 
bold  enough  to  stand  out  from  the  shore  far  enough  would 
find  no  great  difficulty  in  sailing  past  this  awful  cape,  and 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  503 

finding  out  what  there  was  on  the  other  side  of  it.  So  in 
the  year  1433,  the  year  after  the  discovery  of  the  Azores, 
he  appears  to  have  determined  to  make  the  passing  of  Cape 
Bojador  the  next  of  his  undertakings.  It  was  in  this  very 
year  that  King  John,  his  father,  died,  exhorting  him  on  his 
death-bed  to  persevere  in  his  work  of  discovery,  and  thus 
extend  the  Christian  faith  among  the  heathen.  King  Ed- 
ward, the  Prince's  brother,  who  succeeded  King  John  upon 
the  throne  of  Portugal,  also  urged  him  to  go  on,  and 
promised  him  all  the  help  he  could  afford.  Thus  exhorted 
and  encouraged,  our  noble  Prince  continued  his  labors  with 
fresh  zeal  and  determination. 

Among  the  young  gentlemen  who  lived  and  studied  with 
him,  and  served  him  in  his  mansion  at  Sagres,  there  was  a 
certain  Gil  Eannes,  a  brave  man,  and  one  of  the  Prince's 
favorites.  Him,  in  the  summer  of  1433,  the  Prince  sent 
forth  in  command  of  a  small  sailing  vessel,  directing  him  to 
go  beyond  Cape  Bojador,  and  bring  back  some  account  of 
what  there  was  on  the  other  side.  Gil  Eannes  set  sail 
boldly  enough.  But  among  his  crew,  it  seems,  there  were 
four  old  sailors  who  had  heard  the  usual  accounts  of  Cape 
Bojador,  and  they  told  those  wild  tales  to  their  captain, 
who  consequently  went  no  farther  than  the  Canary  Islands, 
whence  he  stole  some  of  the  natives  and  returned  home. 

The  prince  was  exceedingly  displeased,  not  because  he 
had  brought  home  and  made  slaves  of  the  innocent  Canary 
Islanders,  which  no  doubt  the  Prince  regarded  as  a  very 
proper  and  virtuous  action,  but  because  he  had  been  fright- 
ened from  his  purpose  by  the  terrible  stories  of  some  igno- 
rant mariners. 

"  If,"  said  the  Prince,  w  there  were  the  slightest  authority 
for  these  stories  that  they  tell,  I  would  not  blame  you ;  but 
you  come  to  me  with  the  statements  of  four  seamen  who 

32 


504  TKIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

have  been  accustomed  to  the  voyage  to  Flanders,  or  some 
other  well-known  route,  and  beyond  that  have  no  knowledge 
of  the  needle  or  the  sailing  chart.  Go  out  then,  again,  and 
give  no  heed  to  their  opinions;  for  by  the  grace  of  God 
you  cannot  fail  to  derive  from  your  voyage  both  honor  and 
profit.  No  perils  that  you  encounter  can  be  so  great  that 
your  reward  shall  not  be  greater  if  you  accomplish  the 
object." 

These  things  and  many  others  the  Prince  said  to  his  down- 
cast squire  after  his  return  from  the  Canaries  in  1433. 
Prince  Henry  was  not  a  man  whose  censure  or  whose  praise 
could  be  lightly  regarded.  Every  man  who  served  him 
desired,  above  all  things,  to  win  the  approval  of  so  worthy  a 
Prince.  Gil  Eannes  now  secretly  resolved  that,  no  matter 
what  might  be  the  perils,  and  terrors  of  Bojador,  he  would 
pass  beyond  that  cape,  or  never  return  to  tell  the  tale  of  his 
failure. 

Following  the  Prince's  advice,  he  no  longer  hugged  the 
shore  ;  but,  as  soon  as  he  had  got  well  by  the  Canaries,  stood 
out  to  sea,  and  of  course  he  had  no  more  difficulty  in 
passing  the  cape  than  in  sailing  over  any  other  portion  of 
the  Atlantic  on  a  fine  day  in  summer.  As  soon  as  he  had 
got  by  he  stood  in,  and  found  a  pleasant,  tranquil  little  bay, 
to  which  the  end  of  the  cape  served  as  a  breakwater  against 
the  huge  waves  from  the  north,  and  in  which  there  was  good 
anchorage.  He  went  on  shore,  but  found  no  signs  of  inhabi- 
tants ;  and,  indeed,  there  were  not  and  are  not  to  this  day 
any  inhabitants  on  that  part  of  the  coast  of  the  Desert.  He 
gathered  some  plants  that  were  growing  on  the  shore,  which 
were  similar  to  a  plant  common  in  Portugal,  called  by  the 
Portuguese  St.  Mary's  Roses.  Content  with  these  trophies, 
he  ventured  no  farther  south,  but  made  all  haste  home  to  the 
Prince. 


BEGINNING   OF   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  505 

It  is  easy  to  laugh  at  a  ghost  when  you  know  it  is  not  a 
ghost.  It  does,  indeed,  seem  rather  ridiculous  that,  after 
performing  so  easy  a  task,  Gil  Eannes  should  have  been 
received  and  rewarded  as  a  great  hero  and  conqueror,  and 
his  name  carried  all  over  Europe  as  the  valiant  navigator 
who  had  braved  the  terrors  of  the  terrible  Cape  Bojador. 
But  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  imagine  how  awful  that  cape 
was  to  the  ignorant  people  who  lived  four  hundred  years 
ago.  I  should  judge,  from  reading  the  old  books,  that  the 
passing  of  this  cape  was  more  encouraging  to  Prince  Henry 
and  his  friends,  and  had  more  to  do  with  the  progress  of  dis- 
covery than  anything  that  had  yet  occurred,  not  excepting 
the  discovery  of  the  fine  island  of  Madeira.  It  taught  one 
grand  lesson  to  all  concerned,  —  not  to  be  frightened  before 
they  were  hurt. 

The  Prince  was  now  all  alive  to  know  something  of  the 
country  south  of  Cape  Bojador,  —  how  far  Africa  extended , 
and  whether  the  region  beyond  the  cape  had  any  inhabitants. 
The  very  next  summer,  which  was  that  of  1435,  he  sent  Gil 
Eannes  again  in  the  same  vessel,  and  with  this  he  despatched 
a  large  oared  galley,  of  which  he  gave  the  command  to  his 
cup-bearer,  Alphonso  Gonsalvez.  These  two  navigators  had 
no  difficulty  in  getting  by  the  cape,  and  they  kept  on  their 
way  down  along  the  coast  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
beyond  it.  Coming  to  a  convenient  bay,  they  anchored  and 
went  on  shore.  Before  they  had  gone  far  into  the  interior, 
they  found  traces  both  of  men  and  camels,  but  nowhere  any- 
thing like  a  human  habitation.  No  one  ever  lived  there, 
although  for  ages  caravans  of  men  and  camels  had  passed 
and  repassed  along  that  shore. 

But  these  adventurers  knew  nothing  of  caravans  and  the 
roving  life  of  the  Desert.  They  now  knew,  however,  that 
there  were  people  in  Africa ;  how  many,  and  of  what  dispo- 


506  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

sition,  and  how  armed,  they  knew  not.  It  seemed  best  to 
them,  therefore,  to  go  on  board  their  vessels  and  return  to 
Portugal,  which  they  did  with  all  despatch. 

Such  was  the  ardor  of  Prince  Henry  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge  that  he  was  well  satisfied  with  the  summer's 
work,  although  he  only  learned  from  it  that  there  were 
people  and  animals  in  Africa  south  of  Cape  Bojador,  and 
that  it  was  all  a  delusion  about  the  ocean  in  the  tropics 
being  any  shallower  than  in  the  temperate  zone.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  Prince  Henry  ever  believed  that  the  seas  there 
were  boiling ;  but  until  Gil  Eannes  had  passed  the  cape  he 
evidently  thought  that  the  tropical  parts  of  the  ocean  were 
very  shallow.  The  vessel  in  which  Gil  Eannes  first  passed 
the  cape  was  a  bark  of  fifteen  or  twenty  tons.  The  oared 
galley  which  Gonsalvez  commanded  on  the  second  voyage  is 
spoken  of  in  the  old  books  as  the  largest  vessel  that  had  ever 
been  employed  by  the  Prince  in  his  exploring  expeditions. 

There  were  people,  then,  in  Africa  south  of  the  cape.  The 
next  thing  was  to  find  out  who  those  people  were,  —  whether 
they  were  many  or  few,  natives  or  visitors,  and,  above  all, 
in  the  mind  of  Prince  Henry,  whether  they  were  Pagans  or 
Christians.  Accordingly,  the  next  summer  he  again  sent 
his  cup-bearer,  Gonsalvez,  in  the  same  large  oared  galley. 
The  sole  object  of  this  expedition  was  to  bring  home  to 
Portugal  some  of  the  inhabitants  of  Africa ;  and  to  promote 
this  object  the  Prince  sent  with  Gonsalvez  an  interpreter 
who  was  acquainted  with  the  language  of  the  Moors.  He 
also  put  on  board  the  galley  two  horses,  to  make  it  easier 
for  the  adventurers  to  examine  the  country.  To  Gonsalvez 
he  intrusted  two  noble  youths,  aged  about  seventeen  years, 
members  of  his  own  household,  whom  he  was  training  for 
the  future  service  of  the  state.  The  Prince's  orders  to 
Gonsalvez  were  to  go  as  far  down  the  coast  of  Africa  as 


BEGINNING  OF  OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  507 

he  could,  and  to  do  his  very  best  to  capture  at  least  one  of 
the  people  and  bring  him  to  Portugal. 

On  the  morning  of  a  summer  day  in  1436  the  galley  left 
the  port  of  Lagos,  and  directed  its  course  toward  the  African 
coast.  Several  days'  rowing,  aided  by  a  favorable  breeze, 
brought  them  past  Cape  Bojador ;  whence  Gonsalvez  kept  on 
his  way  until  he  had  gone  more  than  two  hundred  miles 
beyond  the  place  where  he  had  gathered  the  plants  on  his 
last  voyage.  He  was  then  three  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
south  of  Cape  Bojador.  Here  they  came  to  what  they 
thought  was  the  mouth  of  a  large  river,  but  which  afterwards 
was  found  to  be  only  an  indentation  into  the  shore,  which 
extended  many  miles  into  the  interior.  Entering  this  deep 
gulf,  which  to  this  day  is  called  a  river  (Rio  d'Ouro) ,  they 
cast  anchor  in  a  convenient  place,  and  Gonsalvez  went  on 
shore,  and  looked  about  him*  The  land  appeared  more 
likely  to  be  inhabited  than  where  they  had  formerly  been  on 
shore,  and  the  commander  thought  that  this  would  be  a  good 
place  to  search  for  the  Africans  whom  the  Prince  desired  so 
much  to  possess. 

The  two  horses  were  landed,  and  upon  them  Gonsalvez 
mounted  the  two  noble  youths  of  whom  I  have  just  spoken. 

w  The  names  of  these  two  youths,"  says  an  old  historian, 
"were  Hector  Homen  and  Diogo  Lopez  d'Almaida,  both 
gentlemen  and  cavaliers,  educated  in  that  school  of  nobility 
and  virtue,  the  household  of  the  excellent  Prince,  the  Infante 
Don  Henry !  " 

An  ancient  Portuguese  chronicler  says  of  them :  w  I  after- 
wards knew  one  of  these  boys  when  he  was  a  noble  gentle- 
man of  good  renown  in  arms,  and  you  will  find  him  in  the 
chronicles  of  the  kingdom  well  proved  in  great  deeds.  The 
other  was  a  nobleman  of  good  presence,  as  1  have  heard  from 
those  who  knew  him." 


508  TEIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPBISE. 

These  gallant  lads  wore  no  armor,  carrying  only  their 
lance  and  sword,  in  order  that  they  might  be  freer  to  make 
their  escape  if  they  should  come  upon  a  large  number  of  the 
natives.  Gonsalvez  ordered  them  to  keep  together,  to  view 
the  country  as  far  as  they  could  without  dismounting,  and  if 
they  could  take  any  captives  without  running  any  risk,  they 
were  to  do  it. 

They  were  lads  of  high  metal,  these  pupils  of  the  noble 
Prince  Henry,  and  they  cantered  gayly  off  as  though  they 
were  going  to  take  a  pleasant  ride  into  a  country  perfectly 
well-known  and  safe ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  the  crew  of 
the  galley  followed  them  with  their  eyes  as  long  as  they 
could  be  seen.  They  kept  along  the  shore  of  the  bay  for 
the  space  of  twenty-one  miles,  without  seeing  any  signs  of 
inhabitants.  It  was  then  pretty  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  it 
was  high  time  for  them  to  set  out  on  their  return  to  the  ship. 
All  at  once  they  came  full  upon  a  group  of  naked  men, 
armed  with  darts.  They  came  upon  them  so  suddenly  that 
it  was  impossible  for  them  to  retreat  without  being  seen. 
Not  having  the  idea  that  naked  black  men  could  have  any 
human  feelings  or  human  rights,  and  being  themselves  but 
boys,  and  at  the  same  time  full  of  desire  to  gratify  the  Prince 
their  master,  they  rushed  into  the  midst  of  the  savages,  and 
began  to  wound  them  with  their  spears.  The  natives, 
astounded  and  bewildered  as  they  were,  defended  themselves 
with  their  darts,  and  wounded  one  of  the  young  men  in  the 
foot.  In  order  the  better  to  resist  the  strangers,  they  gath- 
ered in  a  cluster  behind  a  heap  of  rocks,  where  the  young 
men  could  not  follow  them  upon  their  horses,  nor  reach  them 
with  their  lances. 

Night  coming  on,  and  there  being  no  prospect  of  taking  a 
prisoner,  these  audacious  young  fellows  thought  it  best  to 
leave  the  savages  to  themselves,  and  set  out  upon  their 


BEGINNING  OF   OCEAN  NAVIGATION.  509 

V 

return  to  the  galley.  Night  soon  overtook  them,  but  as  they 
had  only  to  follow  the  course  of  the  bay,  they  continued  their . 
journey  all  night,  and  reached  the  galley  just  as  the  day  was 
breaking  the  next  morning.  Every  reader  can  imagine  the 
relief  and  joy  of  Gonsalvez  and  the  crew  when  they  satvr  the 
young  men  riding  up  on  their  tired  steeds  ;  and  how  warmly 
every  one  extolled  their  valor  and  determination. 

The  wound  in  the  foot  proved  to  be  but  slight,  and  after 
resting  an  hour  or  two  the  lads  were  in  good  condition,  and 
eager  to  guide  their  commander  to  the  spot  where  they  had 
seen  the  natives.  So,  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
they  mounted  their  horses  once  more,  and  Gonsalvez  hoisted 
his  anchor,  and  the  galley  was  rowed  gently  up  the  bay, 
guided  by  the  two  youths  on  horseback  to  the  place  where 
they  had  left  the  savages  the  evening  before.  The  poor 
negroes  had  gone,  however,  and  probably  in  a  great  panic,  for 
they  had  left  behind  them  all  their  little  property,  such  as  it 
was,  which  Gonsalvez  put  on  board  his  galley  to  convey  to 
the  Prince.  The  two  mounted  youths  galloped  far  and  wide 
over  the  country  at  the  head  of  the  bay,  but  they  saw  no 
further  trace  of  human  beings. 

Most  reluctant  was  Gonsalvez  to  leave  the  spot  without  a 
prisoner,  but  he  was  obliged  to  do  so,  and  he  returned 
again  to  the  mouth  of  the  bay.  Still  unwilling  to  give  it 
up,  he  continued  on  his  way  down  the  coast  forty  miles 
farther,  until  they  came  to  the  mouth  of  another  bay, 
where  they  saw  a  wonderful  sight.  On  an  island  which 
lay  across  the  entrance,  they  discovered  an  amazing  number 
of  seals,  or,  as  they  called  them,  sea-wolves,  lying  fast 
asleep.  Gonsalvez  thought  there  were  at  least  five  thousand 
of  them  in  sight  at  one  time.  Here  they  had  a  grand  seal- 
hunt,  and  loaded  the  galley  with  as  many  seal-skins  as  they 
could  find  room  for.  These  were  valuable,  and  would  pay 


510  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

part  of  the  cost  of  the  expedition ;  but  Gonsalvez  was  well 
aware  that  if  he  had  loaded  his  galley  with  gold,  the  Prince 
would  not  have  valued  it  as  much  as  one  African.  What  the 
Prince  wanted  was,  not  seal-skins,  nor  any  other  kind  of 
wealth,  but  knowledge.  Gonsalvez,  therefore,  again  turned 
his  prow  southward,  and  kept  bravely  on  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  farther,  until  he  reached  a  rocky  promontory 
which  looked  so  much  like  a  galley  in  shape,  that  they  called 
it  Gallee,  a  name  which  it  bears  to  this  day. 

Here  again  they  went  on  shore,  and  examined  the  coun- 
try. In  the  course  of  their  rambles  they  found  some  fishing- 
nets,  which,  you  may  be  sure,  they  seized  eagerly  and  closely 
examined.  These  nets  were  not  made  of  hemp,  nor  of  any- 
thing else  the  Portuguese  were  acquainted  with,  but  of  the 
fibres  of  the  bark  of  a  tree  that  grew  near.  And  yet  these 
nets  were  as  strong  as  any  that  could  be  made  by  Europeans. 
Here  Was  another  plain  proof  that  this  part  of  Africa  was 
inhabited ;  but  nowhere  could  Gonsalvez  or  his  crew,  or  the 
brave  youths  of  the  Prince's  household,  find  any  traces  of 
inhabitants  except  these  nets.  The  adventurers  were  obliged 
to  return  to  Portugal,  after  all  the  trouble  they  had  taken, 
without  being  able  to  present  to  their  Prince  a  single  cap- 
tive. 

It  was  in  the  year  1436  that  this  galley  voyage  was  made,  in 
the  course  of  which,  for  the  first  time,  Europeans  sailed  into 
the  torrid  zone,  and  reached  a  point  fourteen  hundred  miles 
south  of  Portugal.  Considering  all  things,  it  was  a  great 
achievement.  So  far  and  no  farther  had  the  ocean  been 
explored  when  Columbus  lay  in  his  mother's  arms  at  Genoa, 
an  infant  a  few  months  old. 


THE  KEAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS. 


THE  CHAIN  OP  EVENTS  LEADING  TO   THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA.—- 
WHO  SUGGESTED  THE  EXPEDITION. 

ABOUT  the  year  1254,  two  Venetian  merchants,  brothers 
of  noble  extraction,  named  MafFeo  Polo  and  Nicholo  Polo, 
set  out  upon  a  voyage  to  Constantinople  in  their  own  vessel, 
carrying  with  them  a  large  quantity  of  rich  and  valuable 
merchandise.  At  Constantinople  they  sold  their  merchan- 
dise, and  were  then  ready  to  employ  their  capital  in  any  way 
that  promised  to  be  profitable.  -  Hearing  that  there  was  a 
good  market  for  jewels  at  the  court  of  a  powerful  Tartar 
Chief,  beyond  the  Black  Sea,  they  bought  a  number  of  costly 
gems,  and  sailed  to  a  port  at  the  extremity  of  the  Crimea, 
where  they  purchased  horses,  and  travelled  many  days  until 
they  reached  their  destination.  Upon  being  presented  to  the 
Tartar  Prince,  they  showed  him  the  jewels  they  had  brought 
with  them.  Perceiving  that  he  was  exceedingly  pleased 
with  their  brilliancy  and  beauty,  they,  in  accordance  with  the 
custom  of  the  East,  made  him  a  present  of  them  all ;  which 
was  only  a  more  profitable  way  of  selling  them.  The  Tar- 
tar Chief,  not  willing  to  be  surpassed  in  generosity,  ordered 
his  treasurer  to  give  them  twice  the  value  of  the  jewels  in 
money,  and  made  them  several  costly  presents  besides. 

Well  pleased  with  the  result  of  the  transaction,  they  re- 
mained a  year  in  the  dominions  of  this  generous  Prince,  and 
at  the  end  of  that  time  prepared  to  set  out  on  their  return 
to  Venice.  But  a  war  breaking  out  between  the  Prince 


512  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

and  one  of  his  neighbors,  the  roads  by  which  they  had  come 
were  unsafe,  and  they  attempted  to  reach  Constantinople  by 
going  round  the  head  of  the  Caspian  Sea,  a  distance  of  about 
sixteen  hundred  miles.  Travelling  on  horseback,  they 
crossed  plains,  deserts,  and  mountains,  journeying  week 
after  week,  until  they  arrived  at  the  Persian  city  of  Bokhara, 
where  they  remained  for  three  years.  At  Bokhara,  they 
fell  in  with  an  ambassador  who  was  on  his  way  to  the  court 
of  the  Grand  Khan,  or  King  of  Kings,  the  great  chief  of  all 
the  Tartar  tribes,  and  at  that  time  the  most  powerful  mon- 
arch of  Asia. 

The  precise  place  of  his  residence  is  not  certainly  known, 
but  it  was  in  the  north  of  China,  about  fifteen  hundred  miles 
east  of  Bokhara.  Hearing  from  this  ambassador  of  the 
wealth  and  liberality  of  the  king,  and  the  disturbed  state  of 
the  country  rendering  it  extremely  difficult  to  travel  home- 
ward without  an  armed  escort,  they  joined  the  suite  of  the 
ambassador,  and  travelled  with  him  to  the  capital  of  the 
Grand  Khan.  They  were  impeded  sometimes  by  the  deep 
snow,  and  often  delayed  on  the  banks  of  a  swollen  river  until 
the  waters  had  receded  into  their  usual  channel ;  so  that  a 
whole  year  elapsed,  after  leaving  Bokhara,  before  they  reached 
the  abode  of  the  Tartar  King. 

The  ambassador  introduced  the  brothers  to  this  mighty 
potentate,  who  enjoyed  nothing  so  much  as  conversation 
with  well-informed  and  intelligent  travellers.  Besides  ques- 
tioning them  respecting  the  kings  of  Europe,  the  extent  of 
their  possessions,  their  laws  and  customs,  he  manifested  a 
particular  curiosity  concerning  the  Pope,  the  church,  the 
worship  and  religious  usages  of  Christians.  The  brothers, 
who  were  good  Catholics,  gave  him  abundant  information  on 
these  points,  and  they  made  upon  his  mind  so  favorable  an 
impression  with  regard  to  the  Christian  religion,  that  he 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OP  COLUMBUS.          513 

determined  to  employ  them  as  his  ambassadors  to  the  Pope. 
The  Khan  told  them  that  his  object  was  to  request  his  Holi- 
ness to  send  him  a  hundred  men  of  learning,  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  the  principles  of  the  Christian  religion,  as 
well  as  with  "the  seven  arts,"  and  qualified  to  prove  that  the 
Christian -faith  was  truer  and  better  than  any  other.  He  said 
that  he  wished  to  know  whether  or  not  it  was  true,  that  the 
Tartar  gods  and  idols  were  only  evil  spirits,  whom  the  people 
of  the  Eastern  world  were  wrong  in  worshipping.  He  like- 
wise signified  his  desire  that  they  should  bring  with  them, 
from  Jerusalem,  on  their  way  back,  some  of  the  holy  oil  from 
the  lamp  which  was  kept  burning  over  the  sepulchre  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

Upon  hearing  these  desires  of  the  great  king,  so  agreeable 
and  flattering  to  them  as  Catholics,  they  prostrated  them- 
selves before  him,  and  declared  that  they  were  ready 
instantly  to  set  out  on  an  embassy  so  important  and  honor- 
able. The  Khan  caused  to  be  written  to  the  Pope  letters 
in  the  Tartar  language,  in  which  his  requests  were  made 
known.  He  also  gave  the  merchants  a  small  tablet  of  gold, 
containing  upon  it  the  imperial  cipher,  or  seal,  which  entitled 
whomsoever  held  it  to  be  escorted  and  conveyed  from  station 
to  station,  from  city  to  city,  by  all  the  Tartar  governors, 
and  also  to  supplies  of  provisions  for  the  journey,  and  to 
free  maintenance  wherever  they  chose  to  stop. 

They  were,  as  near  as  I  can  compute,  about  two  thousand 
miles  from  Venice,  and  the  following  is  the  account  of  their 
journey  a  part  of  the  way  home  :  — 

"  Being  thus  honorably  commissioned,  they  took  their  leave  of 
the  Grand  Khan,  and  set  out  on  their  journey,  but  had  not  pro- 
ceeded more  than  twenty  days,  when  the  officer,  named  Khogatal, 
their  companion,  fell  dangerously  ill,  in  the  city  named  Alan.  In 
this  dilemma  it  was  determined,  upon  consulting  all  who  were 


514  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

present,  and  with  the  approbation  of  the  man  himself,  that  they 
should  leave  him  behind.  In  the  prosecution  of  their  journey, 
they  derived  essential  benefit  from  being  provided  with  the  royal 
tablet,  which  procured  them  attention  in  every  place  through 
which  they  passed.  Their  expenses  were  defrayed,  and  escorts 
were  furnished.  But  notwithstanding  these  advantages,  so  great 
were  the  natural  difficulties  they  had  to  encounter  from  the  extreme 
cold,  the  snow,  the  ice,  and  the  flooding  of  the  rivers,  that  their 
progress  was  unavoidably  tedious,  and  three  years  elapsed  before 
they  were  enabled  to  reach  a  seaport  town  in  the  lesser  Armenia. 
Departing  from  thence  by  sea,  they  arrived  at  Acre,  in  the  month 
of  April,  1269." 

Acre  is  a  port  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  there  they  were 
within  reach  of  European  news.  At  Acre  they  learned  that 
the  Pope  was  dead,  and  that  a  new  one  was  not  yet  elected ; 
so  they  communicated  their  mission  to  the  Pope's  Legate 
resident  at  Acre,  who  advised  them  to  wait  until  the  election 
of  a  Pope  had  taken  place,  and  then  proceed  to  Rome  and 
deliver  to  him  the  letters  of  the  Grand  Khan.  As  this 
seemed  the  only  course  open  to  them,  they  adopted  it,  and 
resolved  to  employ  the  interval  in  visiting  their  families 
at  Venice.  They  embarked  on  board  a  vessel,  and  soon 
reached  their  native  city.  Nicolo  Polo  had  left  his  wife  at 
a  time  when  there  was  a  prospect  of  her  soon  making  him  a 
father ;  but  during  all  his  journeyings  he  had  never  heard 
a  word  from  home.  Upon  reaching  his  abode,  he  was 
informed  that  his  wife  had  died  soon  after  giving  birth  to  a 
son,  who  had  been  christened  by  the  name  of  Marco,  and 
was  then  fifteen  years  of  age. 

•  Thus  fifteen  years  were  consumed  in  the  travels  of  these 
two  Venetian  merchants ;  which  altogether  did  not  amount 
to  much  more,  in  point  of  distance,  than  a  journey  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco. 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          515 

Two  years  elapsed  before  a  new  Pope  was  elected.  The 
brothers,  accompanied  by  the  youthful  Marco,  then  pre- 
sented themselves  before  the  chief  of  the  Christian  Church 
at  Rome,  who  received  them  with  cordiality,  and  read  the 
letters  of  the  Grand  Khan  with  the  respect  due  to  so  great 
a  monarch.  The  Pope  did  not  send  the  Khan  a  hundred 
learned  men,  as  he  had  requested ;  but  selected  two  friars 
to  go  to  the  Tartar  court,  giving  them  authority  to  ordain 
priests  and  consecrate  bishops,  and  ordering  them  to 
expound  with  their  best  ability,  and  recommend  with  all 
their  eloquence,  the  Christian  religion  among  the  Tartars. 
He  also  gave  them  several  handsome  crystal  vases,  and  other 
beautiful  gifts,  to  be  presented  to  the  great  king  in  his  name 
and  with  his  blessing. 

Most  perilous,  arduous  and  wearisome  was  their  journey. 
The  two  priests  soon  became  discouraged  and  turned  back, 
but  the  three  Venetians  persevered  in  spite  of  every  obsta- 
cle. The  king  had  removed  his  capital  near  to  where  Pekin 
now  stands,  and  it  was  three  years  and  a  half  before  the 
travellers  got  near  enough  to  him  even  to  know  where  he 
was.  And  it  appears  the  Khan  heard  of  them  about  as  soon 
as  they  heard  of  him.  For  Marco  tells  us  that  the  king 
sent  a  party  to  meet  them  at  the  distance  of  forty  days'  jour- 
ney from  his  capital,  and  gave  orders  for  everything  to  be 
made  ready  for  their  comfort  on  the  way. 

"By  these  means,"  adds  Marco  Polo,  "and  through  the 
blessing  of  God,  they  were  conveyed  in  safety  to  the  royal 
court." 

The  king  gave  them  a  truly  grand  reception  in  a  full  assem- 
bly of  his  councillors.  They  related  their  travels,  explained 
their  delay,  delivered  the  letters  of  the  Pope,  and  gave  the 
precious  vessel  of  oil  from  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Observing 
the  youthful  Marco,  the  king  asked  who  he  was. 


516  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

"This,"  said  his  father,  "is  your  servant  and  my  son." 

"  He  is  welcome,"  said  the  Khan,  "  and  I  am  glad  that  he 
is  here." 

He  caused  the  youth  to  be  enrolled  among  his  honorable 
attendants,  employed  him,  made  much  of  him,  promoted  him, 
sent  him  on  various  errands  all  over  the  Eastern  world,  and 
treated  the  whole  family  with  the  greatest  liberality  and 
respect. 

Twenty-four  years  passed  away.  On  a  certain  day  in  the 
year  1295,  three  men  in  patched  and  coarse  garments 
knocked  at  the  door  of  the  Polo  mansion  in  Venice,  and 
demanded  admittance.  They  were  the  two  merchants,  gray- 
haired  now,  but  still  erect  and  vigorous,  and  Marco  Polo  in 
the  prime  of  life.  So  coarse  was  their  attire,  and  so  changed 
were  their  countenances  by  the  lapse  of  years  and  by  long 
travel,  that  their  kindred  who  lived  in  the  house  had  some 
difficulty  in  recognizing  them. 

A  few  days  after,  the  family  invited  all  their  old  friends 
and  relations  to  a  grand  entertainment,  at  which  the  two 
brothers  and  Marco  appeared  in  magnificent  robes  of  crim- 
son satin  flowing  down  to  the  floor,  which  they  afterwards 
changed  for  robes  of  crimson  damask,  and  again  to  gorgeous 
dresses  of  crimson  velvet ;  all  of  which  they  divided  among 
the  guests  as  they  took  them  off.  At  the  end  of  the  repast, 
Marco  withdrew  and  brought  in  the  clothes —  coarse,  dirty, 
and  patched — which  they  had  worn  on  their  arrival.  They 
proceeded  to  rip  with  knives  the  seams  and  patches  of 
these  garments,  when  the  guests  discovered  that  these  ragged 
old  clothes  had  concealed  a  marvellous  quantity  of  rubies, 
sapphires,  carbuncles,  diamonds,  and  emeralds,  with  which 
the  Great  Khan  had  rewarded  their  long  service,  and  upon 
which  they  lived  in  great  splendor  all  the  rest  of  their  days. 

Some  time  after,  Marco  Polo,  while  serving  in  the  Vene- 


THE   REAL,  MERITS   OF   COLUMBUS.  517 

tian  navy,  was  taken  prisoner  and  conveyed  to  Genoa,  where 
he  was  kept  in  confinement  for  four  years.  To  amuse  him- 
self in  prison,  he  wrote  out  the  story  of  his  adventures  and 
travels,  which,  being  published,  remained  for  two  centuries 
and  more  one  of  the  most  popular  and  universal  of  books. 
It  may  still  be  bought  in  almost  every  large  book-store. 

The  work  was  well  calculated  to  provoke  curiosity.  To 
this  day  it  can  be  read  with  great  pleasure.  When  the 
author  speaks  of  what  he  himself  saw,  he  appears  to  have 
spoken  the  truth,  although  many  of  his  statements  make 
large  demands  upon  our  credulity.  He  describes,  for  exam- 
ple, that  remarkable  breed  of  sheep  mentioned  by  Herodo- 
tus, which  have  tails  weighing  thirty  pounds  and  upwards ; 
the  sheep  themselves  being  as  large  as  asses.  This  was  long 
supposed  to  be  only  a  traveller's  tale,  but  a  recent  French 
writer  confirms  Herodotus  and  Polo  ;  and  a  modern  English 
traveller  informs  us  that  the  tails  of  these  sheep  are  so  long 
and  heavy,  that  the  shepherds  are  obliged  to  fix  a  piece  of 
board  under  them  to  prevent  their  being  injured  by  rubbing 
on  the  ground.  Some  shepherds,  he  adds,  fix  a  pair  of 
wheels  to  this  board  to  facilitate  its  progress  over  the  soil ; 
which  confirms  Herodotus,  who  speaks  of  the  tails  of  these 
sheep  being  "  supported  by  little  carts. " 

Marco  Polo  drew  enchanting  pictures  of  the  splendor  and 
profusion  of  Oriental  courts.  He  speaks  of  one  king  who 
lived  in  a  beautiful  valley  shut  in  by  mountains,  where  he  had 
a  luxurious  garden,  abounding  in  delicious  fruits  and  fragrant 
flowers,  and  where  he  had  palaces  of  various  forms,  orna- 
mented with  works  in  gold,  with  paintings,  and  with  rich 
furniture.  By  means  of  small  conduits  in  these  palaces, 
streams  of  wine,  milk,  honey,  and  water  were  to  be  seen 
flowing  in  every  direction.  The  inhabitants  of  these  sump- 
tuous abodes  were  elegant  and  lovely  girls,  possessing  in 


518  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

great  perfection  the  arts  of  singing  and  playing  upon  instru- 
ments. Clad  in  rich  dresses,  these  alluring  damsels  were 
seen  continually  sporting  and  amusing  themselves  in  the 
gardens  and  arbors,  while  their  female  guardians  carefully 
concealed  themselves  within. 

In  another  kingdom,  governed  by  Princes  descended  from 
Alexander  and  the  daughter  of  Darius,  Marco  says  that  the 
best  rubies  in  the  world  were  found,  embedded  in  a  high 
mountain,  so  precious  and  splendid  that  they  were  never 
sold,  but  reserved  exclusively  for  royal  gifts.  In  the  same 
kingdom  the  stone  was  found  which  yields  the  most  beautiful 
blue,  and  the  horses  had  hoofs  so  hard  that  they  required  no 
shoeing.  He  has  a  great  deal  to  say  also  respecting  the 
power  and  glory  of  the  Grand  Khan,  the  King  of  kings, 
the  greatest  monarch  in  all  the  Oriental  world. 

"  In  the  middle  of  the  hall,"  he  tells  us,  "  where  the  Grand 
Khan  sits  at  table,  there  is  a  magnificent  piece  of  furniture, 
made  in  the  form  of  a  square  coffer,  each  side  of  which  is 
three  paces  in  length,  exquisitely  carved  with  figures  of  ani- 
mals, and  gilt.  It  is  hollow  within,  for  the  purpose  of 
receiving  a  capacious  vase  shaped  like  a  jar,  and  of  precious 
materials,  calculated  to  hold  about  a  tun,  and  filled  with  wine. 
On  each  of  its  four  sides  stands  a  smaller  vessel  containing 
about  a  hogshead,  one  of  which  is  filled  with  mare's  milk, 
another  with  that  of  the  camel,  and  so  of  the  others  accord- 
ing to  the  kinds  of  beverage  in  use.  Within  this  buffet  are 
also  the  cups  or  flagons  belonging  to  his  Majesty  for  serving 
the  liquors.  Some  of  them  are  of  beautiful  gilt  plate.  Their 
size  is  such  that,  when  filled  with  wine  or  other  liquor,  the 
quantity  would  be  sufficient  for  eight  or  ten  men.  Before 
every  two  persons  who  have  seats  at  the  tables  one  of  these 
flagons  is  placed,  together  with  a  kind  of  ladle  in  the  form  of 
a  cup  with  a  handle,  also  of  plate,  to  be  used  not  only  for 


THE   REAL  MERITS   OF  COLUMBUS.  519 

taking  the  wine  out  of  the  flagon,  but  for  lifting  it  to  the 
head.  The  quantity  and  richness  of  the  plate  belonging  to 
his  majesty  are  quite  incredible." 

Such  passages  as  these  respecting  the  Grand  Khan  have  a 
particular  interest,  because  they  were  quoted  by  Columbus 
in  his  letters  to  the  sovereigns  of  Europe,  urging  them  to 
undertake  a  voyage  of  discovery  to  the  west.  It  was  to 
reach  the  region  capable  of  sustaining  such  profusion  as  this, 
that  Columbus  sailed. 

One  curious  fact  which  Marco  Polo  mentions  is,  that  the 
Grand  Khan  issued  a  kind  of  paper  money,  made  of  the 
bark  of  the  mulberry-tree,  cut  into  oblong  pieces  of  different 
sizes,  each  size  having  a  particular  value,  and  each  bearing  , 
the  signature  of  high  officers  appointed  by  the  king.  Marco 
Polo  gives  a  particular  account  of  the  manufacture,  circula- 
tion, and  redemption  of  this  paper  money,  which  concludes 
with  the  following  words  :  — 

"  When  any  persons  happened  to  be  possessed  of  paper  money 
which  from  long  use  had  become  damaged,  they  carry  it  to  the  mint, 
where,  upon  the  payment  of  only  three  per  cent  they  may  receive 
fresh  notes  in  exchange.  Should  any  be  desirous  of  procuring  gold 
or  silver  for  the  purposes  of  manufacture,  such  as  of  drinking  cups, 
girdles,  or  other  articles  wrought  of  these  metals,  they  in  like 
manner  apply  at  the  mint,  and  for  their  paper  obtain  the  bullion 
they  require.  All  his  majesty's  armies  are  paid  with  this  currency, 
which  is  to  them  of  the  same  value  as  if  it  were  gold  or  silver. 
Upon  these  grounds  it  may  certainly  be  affirmed  that  the  Grand 
Khan  has  a  more  extensive  command  of  treasure  than  any  other 
sovereign  in  the  universe." 

He  spoke  of  another  region,  where  all  the  money  con- 
sisted of  plain  gold  rods,  which  were  cut  into  lengths, 
each  piece  being  valued  according  to  its  length.  He  spoke 
of  a  seaport  where  ships  were  to  be  seen  from  all  parts  of 

33 


520  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

the  East,  and  where  the  merchants  were  wealthier  than  the 
princes  of  other  countries.  He  spoke  of  an  island  where 
gold  was  so  abundant  that  the  sovereign's  palace  had  the 
entire  roof  plated  with  gold;  the  ceilings  were  of  gold, 
the  windows  had  golden  ornaments,  and  some  of  the  rooms 
had  tables  of  pure  gold.  In  the  same  island  there  were 
pearls  of  wonderful  size  and  beauty. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  and  useful  passage  in  the 
work  of  Marco  Polo  is  that  in  which  he  describes  the  manner 
in  which  the  Indian  ships  were  built  in  compartments,  —  an 
idea  which  has  since  been  adopted  by  the  ship-builders  of 
all  countries. 

•w  Some  ships  of  the  larger  class,"  he  says,  "  have  as  many 
as  thirteen  bulkheads,  or  divisions  in  the  hold  formed  of 
thick  planks  let  into  each  other.  The  object  of  these  is  to 
guard  against  accidents  which  may  occasion  the  vessel  to 
spring  a  leak,  such  as  striking  a  rock  or  receiving  a  stroke 
from  a  whale,  —  a  circumstance  that  not  unfrequently 
occurs.  .  .  .  The  crew,  upon  discovering  the  situation  of 
the  leak,  immediately  remove  the  goods  from  the  division 
affected  by  the  water,  which,  in  consequence  of  the  boards 
being  so  well  fitted,  cannot  pass  from  one  division  to 
another.  They  then  repair  the  damage,  and  return  the 
goods  to  that  place  in  the  hold  from  whence  they  had  been 
taken." 

The  hint  afforded  by  this  passage  was  never  acted  upon 
by  the  ship-builders  of  Europe  or  America  until  Dr.  Frank- 
lin called  attention  to  it  and  recommended  it,  towards  the 
close  of  his  valuable  life.  Even  then  the  expedient  was 
seldom  employed ;  and  it  was  not  until  this  age  of  great 
steamships  that  vessels  of  magnitude  were  generally  built 
with  water-tight  compartments.  The  Indian  vessels  which 
Marco  Polo  describes  as  being  built  in  this  manner  must 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.         521 

have  been  of  great  size,  for  he  says  that  some  of  them 
required  crews  of  three  hundred  men,  and  carried  six  thou- 
sand bags  of  pepper. 

From  these  few  specimens  the  reader  can  form  some  idea 
of  the  influence  and  attractiveness  of  Marco  Polo's  work  in 
an  age  when  Europeans  generally  knew  nothing  whatever 
of  the  world  beyond  the  boundaries  of  their  own  country. 
We  may  judge  of  its  general  effect  by  that  which  it  produced 
upon  Sir  John  Mandeville,  an  English  knight  of  ancient 
lineage,  and  well  versed  in  the  knowledge  which  Europe 
then  possessed.  Such  curiosity  was  enkindled  in  his  mind 
respecting  the  wonder-lands  of  the  East,  that  at  twenty- 
seven  he  left  his  country,  and  traversed  the  whole  eastern 
world,  visiting  Egypt,  Palestine,  Arabia,  China,  and  India ; 
returning  to  England  an  old  man,  after  an  absence  of  thirty- 
four  years,  to  publish  his  travels,  and  thus  further  inflame 
the  curiosity  of  mankind. 

Besides  confirming  what  Marco  Polo  had  .recorded  of  the 
great  wealth  of  India,  and  the  splendid  court  of  the  Grand 
Khan,  he  related  many  things  of  which  Europeans  had  never 
previously  heard.  It  was  he  who  first  told  Christendom  of 
the  Egyptians  hatching  chickens  in  ovens ;  of  the  mode  of 
sending  messages  by  pigeons  ;  and  of  the  manner  in  which 
diamonds  were  found,  sorted,  and  prepared  for  sale.  He 
described  the  growth  and  culture  of  pepper.  It  was  he  also 
who  first  wrote  of  the  Car  of  Juggernaut,  and  the  victims 
crushed  under  its  wheels,  and  described  the  burning  of  wid- 
ows on  the  funeral  piles  of  their  husbands.  The  crocodile, 
the  hippopotamus,  the  elephant,  the  giraffe,  he  had  the  good 
fortune  to  describe  to  people  who  had  never  seen  them.  In 
his  work  Europeans  first  read  of  the  peculiar  customs  of 
the  Chinese,  —  the  long  tails  of  the  men,  the  little  feet  of 
the  women,  and  other  strange  freaks  and  fashions  now  so 
familiar  to  all  the  world. 


522  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

But  the  great  influence  of  Mandeville's  travels  arose  from 
the  fact  that  he  confirmed  so  many  of  the  statements  of 
Mareo  Polo.  The  works  of  both  these  travellers  contained 
marvels  too  great  even  for  the  credulity  of  the  middle  ages ; 
and  perhaps,  if  one  had  not  confirmed  the  other  on  some 
of  the  most  material  points,  neither  could  have  produced  so 
profound  an  impression  upon  the  best  minds  of  the  time. 
Mandeville's  book,  like  Marco  Polo's,  had  wonderful  cur- 
rency. Not  only  were  a  multitude  of  copies  produced,  but 
many  of  the  copyists,  to  enhance  the  value  of  their  product, 
inserted  in  the  text  marvels  of  their  own  invention,  for  which 
the  injured  author  has  had  to  suffer  reproach  in  modern  times. 
Mandeville  was  in  truth  an  honest,  intelligent  man,  and 
when  he  related  what  he  saw  himself  he  usually  spoke 
the  truth,  although,  like  Polo,  he  was  often  led  astray  by  the 
reports  of  others. 

Judged  by  the  effects  which  it  produced,  the  little  book  of 
Marco  Polo  must  be  pronounced  the  most  important  piece  of 
writing  which  has  been  executed  during  the  last  thousand 
years.  There  arose  during  the  next  century  an  intense 
desire  in  the  minds  of  educated  men  to  know  more  of  the 
great  globe  which  they  inhabited,  and  particularly  of  those 
countries  in  Asia  whence  came  the  spices,  drugs,  jewels, 
metals,  and  fabrics,  which  were  associated  in  the  minds  of 
all  with  wealth  and  luxury.  At  present  we  do  not  think 
much  of  such  things  as  nutmegs,  cinnamon,  cloves,  allspice, 
and  pepper,  because  they  are  cheap  and  common ;  but  five 
hundred  years  ago,  no  one  but  kings,  nobles,  and  great  mer- 
chants ever  saw  them,  for  they  were  worth  their  weight  in 
gold ;  and  nothing  was  too  strange  to  believe  of  countries 
that  produced  commodities  so  rare  and  exquisite.  The  dia- 
monds, too,  that  glittered  in  kings'  crowns,  and  sparkled 
on  the  diadems  of  princesses,  all  came  from  the  mysterious 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          523 

regions  of  Asia,  to  which  a  European  scarcely  ever  pene- 
trated. Except  the  nobles,  almost  the  only  rich  people  in 
Europe  were  the  merchants  who  trafficked  in  the  precious 
things  of  India ;  and  Venice,  whose  ship-yards  employed 
sixteen  thousand  men,  and  whose  vessels  were  seen  in  every 
harbor,  had  grown  great  by  this  commerce  alone. 

Among  the  learned  men  in  Europe  who  read  in  manuscript 
the  travels  of  Marco  Polo,  no  one  studied  them  with  an  inter- 
est so  passionate  and  sustained  as  a  certain  famous  astronomer 
of  Florence  named  Toscanelli.  Being  an  astronomer,  he 
knew  that  the  earth  was  a  globe ;  and,  as  he  brooded  over 
the  scenes  of  wonder  which  Marco  Polo  revealed,  the  thought 
dawned  upon  his  mind,  at  length,  that  perhaps  the  land  of 
spices  and  diamonds,  of  rubies  and  gold,  which  lay  far  to 
the  east  of  his  native  land,  could  be  reached  by  sailing  to 
the  west. 

It  was  this  thought  of  Toscanelli  which  led  to  the  discovery 
of  America. 

As  often  as  he  had  opportunity,  he  conversed  with  mer- 
chants who  traded  in  the  commodities  of  the  East,  and  gath- 
ered from  them  all  that  they  knew  or  had  heard  of  the 
productions  and  situation  of  the  Oriental  countries.  Once 
there  came  to  Florence  an  ambassador  from  the  Grand  Khan. 
Toscanelli  conversed  with  this  interesting  personage,  who 
confirmed  abundantly  all  that  Marco  Polo  relates  of  the  vast 
extent  and  various  wealth  of  the  Eastern  world. 

As  years  rolled  on,  the  notion  of  reaching  the  East  by 
sailing  to  the  west  acquired  in  the  ardent  mind  of  this  Ital- 
ian philosopher  something  of  the  dominating  power  of  a 
mania.  He  attached  the  more  importance  to  it  because  he 
thought  the  world  was  much  smaller  than  it  is.  He  sup- 
posed that  a  navigator  would  only  have  to  sail  six  thousand 
five  hundred  miles  westward  in  order  to  reach  Asia,  whereas 


524  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  true  distance  is  about  sixteen  thousand  miles.  Possessed 
by  his  theory,  and  being  in  correspondence  with  the  learned 
men  of  every  capital  in  Europe  which  could  boast  of  learned 
men,  he  was  diligent  in  making  it  known ;  and,  indeed,  he 
appears  to  have  written  of  it  so  often  that  he  became  at 
length  somewhat  ashamed  of  repeating  the  demonstration. 
Toscanelli  was  a  man  of  European  reputation,  past  three- 
score and  ten,  when  his  darling  thought  dropped  like  a  ripe 
seed  into  the  mind  in  which  it  was  destined  to  germinate. 

Affonso  the  Fifth  was  King  of  Portugal  when  the  occur- 
rences took  place  which  I  am  about  to  relate.  This  king 
figures  in  Portuguese  history  as  "  Affonso  the  African," 
because  in  his  reign  so  many  discoveries  were  made  in  Africa 
by  navigators  who  sailed  under  his  orders.  He  is  also  called 
"  Affonso  The  Redeemer,"  from  his  having  redeemed  so  many 
African  slaves.  His  first  wife  was  a  daughter  of  that  Prince 
Pedro  who  made  the  twelve  years'  tour  of  the  world,  and 
brought  home  from  Venice  the  precious  manuscript  of  Marco 
Polo.  To  this  interesting  fact  I  need  only  add,  that  he  was 
the  founder  of  the  first  public  library  that  Portugal  ever 
possessed,  to  show  that  he  was  a  man  likely  to  catch  at  Tos- 
canelli's  daring  theory.  He  appears  to  have  heard  of  it  in 
the  year  1474.  It  was  in  that  year,  at  least,  that  he  ordered 
his  secretary  to  write  to  Toscanelli  on  the  subject,  and  ask 
him  for  an  exact  description  of  the  course  to  be  taken  in 
order  to  reach  India  by  sailing  to  the  west.  Toscanelli 
replied  most  fully  to  the  king's  secretary,  although  he  began 
his  letter  with  a  kind  of  apology  for  repeating  once  more  his 
oft-told  tale.  Few  letters  so  important  as  this  have  ever 
been  written  since  the  art  of  writing  was  invented. 

"Although,"  wrote  Toscanelli,  "I  have  often  treated  of 
the  advantages  of  this  route,  I  will  once  more,  since  the 
Most  Serene  King  desires  it,  indicate  with  precision  the 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          525 

course  which  it  will  be  necessary  to  follow.  With  a  globe 
in  my  hand  I  could  demonstrate  the  correctness  of  my  the- 
ory ;  but  I  can  show  the  ship's  course  upon  a  chart  like 
those  used  by  mariners,  upon  which  I  have  myself  marked 
the  entire  line  of  coast  from  Ireland  to  the  end  of  Guinea, 
with  all  the  intervening  islands.  Directly  opposite  this  line 
x)f  coast,  straight  to  the  west,  I  have  placed  the  beginning 
of  the  Indies,  with  the  islands  and  places  which  a  navigator 
would  first  reach.  You  will  see  also  upon  this  chart  how  far 
you  can  go  from  the  Arctic  Pole  towards  the  Equator,  and  at 
what  distance  to  the  west  lie  those  regions  so  fertile  and  so 
abounding  in  spices  and  precious  stones.  .  .  .  You  will 
not  be  surprised  that  I  place  upon  this  map  the  land  of  spices 
to  the  west,  —  the  land  which  we  generally  call  the  Levant ; 
for  those  who  will  continue  to  sail  westward  will  come  at  last 
to  those  very  regions  at  which  travellers  arrive  who  journey 
by  land  toward  the  east." 

When  he  had  explained  the  chart,  he  proceeded  to  remark 
upon  the  extent  and  wealth  of  the  Eastern  countries,  —  not 
omitting  to  remind  his  correspondent  of  the  multitudes  of 
human  beings  in  those  regions  who  might  be  expected  to 
embrace  the  Christian  faith,  if  only  the  gospel  could  be 
preached  to  them. 

"From  the  port  of  ZaTthoun,"  he  continued,  " a  hundred 
ships  sail  every  year  loaded  with  spices.  Several  provinces 
and  kingdoms  pay  tribute  to  the  Grand  Khan,  who  is,  as  it 
were,  the  king  of  kings,  and  who  lives  generally  in  Cathay. 
His  predecessors  wished  to  establish  commercial  relations 
with  the  Christians ;  and,  two  hundred  years  ago,  they  sent 
ambassadors  to  the  Popes  asking  instructors  competent  to 
explain  our  faith.  But  those  ambassadors  could  not  reach 
Rome,  but  were  obliged  to  turn  back  on  account  of  the  im- 
mense difficulties  of  the  journey.  Under  the  reign  of  Pope 


526  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Eugenius  the  Fourth,  came  an  ambassador  who  assured  his 
Holiness  of  the  affection  which  the  princes  and  people  of  his 
country  had  for  the  Catholics.  I  ha<}  a  long  conversation 
with  that  ambassador,  in  the  course  of  which  he  spoke  to  me 
of  the  magnificence  of  his  king,  of  the  great  rivers  that  water 
his  country,  one  of  which  has  upon  its  banks  two  hundred 
cities,  and  is  crossed  by  ten  bridges  of  marble.  He  spoke, 
too,  of  a  country  where  they  choose  for  officers  of  the  gov- 
ernment men  of  letters,  without  regard  to  birth  or  wealth. 
He  told  me  also  of  that  city  of  Quisay,  a  name  which  signi- 
fies City  of  Heaven,  situated  in  the  province  of  Mango, 
near  Cathay,  and  the  circumference  of  which  is  twenty-five 
league  s." 

The  chart  sent  by  Toscanelli  with  his  letter  contained  a 
peculiarity  not  mentioned  in  the  passages  quoted.  The 
space  between  Europe  and  Asia  was  divided  upon  it  into 
twenty-six  portions  of  two  hundred  fifty  miles  each,  making 
the  whole  distance  six  thousand  five  hundred  miles.  Fortu- 
nate mistake  !  Columbus,  daring  and  devoted  as  he  was, 
would  scarcely  have  ventured  forth  into  the  unknown  ocean 
if  he  had  supposed  that  sixteen  thousand  miles  stretched 
between  Lisbon  and  that  wonderful  Cipango  (Japan)  of 
which  Marco  Polo  gives  so  alluring  an  account. 

Columbus  was  in  Lisbon  when  Toscanelli's  letter  and  chart 
arrived.  He  had  then  resided  four  years  in  the  dominions 
of  the  King  of  Portugal ;  during  which  a  series  of  events  had 
rendered  him  of  all  living  men  the  readiest  to  accept  Tos- 
canelli's  theory.  A  devout  Catholic,  he  had  been  accustomed 
to  hear  mass  every  morning  in  the  chapel  of  a  convent, 
which  was  also  attended  by  the  young  ladies  of  the  convent 
school.  One  of  these  ladies  was  Donna  Felipa,  daughter  of 
Perestrello,  Governor  of  Porto  Santo,  an  island  near  Madeira. 
Columbus  fell  in  love  with  her,  married  her,  and  went  soon 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          527 

after  to  live  at  Porto  Santo,  with  his  wife's  mother,  then  a 
widow.  Here  Columbus,,  as  Mr.  Irving  finely  says,  was 
"  on  the  frontier  of  discovery,"  away  out  on  the  broad  ocean, 
on  the  track  of  navigators  who  sailed  every  year  from  Por- 
tugal to  the  coast  of  Africa.  More  than  once,  as  his  son 
Fernando  records,  he  sailed  to  the  coast  of  Guinea,  and  saw 
with  his  own  eyes  the  wonders  which  had  been  so  often  the 
topic  of  conversation  at  Lisbon. 

At  Porto  Santo  his  mother-in-law  gave  up  to  him  the 
diaries  and  other  manuscripts  of  her  deceased  husband,  who 
had  been  brought  up  in  the  household  of  Prince  Henry,  under 
whose  orders  he  had  often  sailed,  and  who  had  appointed 
him  Governor  of  the  first  colony  which  he  had  planted.  A 
sister  of  his  wife  Felipa  had  married  another  famous  navi- 
gator, Correa  by  name ;  so  that  the  whole  family  party  on 
the  island,  both  from  inclination  and  necessity,  were  singu- 
larly alive  to  everything  that  related  to  navigation  and  dis- 
covery. It  was  Pedro  Correa  who  related  one  day  in  the 
family,  Columbus  being  present,  that  a  piece  of  carved  wood 
had  been  washed  ashore  on  the  island  during  the  prevalence 
of  a  westerly  storm.  Some  Portuguese  pilots  informed  him 
that  exceedingly  long  reeds  had  come  ashore  at  the  Canaries 
while  a  westerly  wind  was  blowing ;  and  a  friend  who  lived 
on  one  of  the  Azores  spoke  to  him  of  enormous  trunks  of 
pine-trees,  of  a  kind  unknown  in  Europe,  blown  ashore  from 
the  west.  Two  human  bodies  of  an  unknown  race  had 
been  tossed,  as  he  was  informed,  on  one  of  the  Azores  dur- 
ing a  westerly  storm.  The  people  of  those  islands,  ignorant 
of  the  optical  illusion  which  we  call  mirage,  were  continually 
fancying  that  they  saw  islands  lying  far  to  the  west,  of  which 
they  sometimes  went  in  search,  but  found  them  not.  All 
these  things,  though  they  awakened  in  Columbus  a  profound 
curiosity  to  know  what  there  might  be  to  the  west  beyond 


528  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  wide  waste  of  waters,  did  not  suffice  to  suggest  to  his 
mind  the  idea  of  undertaking  the  enterprise  that  was  to 
immortalize  his  name. 

In  1474  he  was  at  Lisbon  again,  making  maps,  charts, 
and  globes  for  the  support  of  his  wife  and  child,  sending  a 
little  money  now  and  then  to  his  aged  father  at  Genoa, 
toward  the  education  of  his  two  younger  brothers.  At  Lis- 
bon there  was  then  a  little  colony  of  Italian  merchants  and 
mariners,  with  whom  he  frequently  conversed  upon  the  sub- 
ject nearest  his  heart.  He  was  told  one  day  by  an  Italian 
friend  of  the  letter  and  chart  which  Toscanelli  had  sent  to 
the  King  of  Portugal.  Columbus  listened  to  an  outline  of 
Toscanelli's  theory  with  an  interest  of  which  ordinary  mor- 
tals cannot  form  the  faintest  idea.  He  was  approaching  his 
destiny.  His  whole  previous  life  had  been  only  one  long 
preparation  for  that  thrilling  moment.  It  so  happened  that 
one  of  his  Italian  friends  was  about  to  return  to  Florence, 
and  Columbus  seized  the  opportunity  —  there  were  no  public 
means  of  forwarding  letters  then  —  to  write  to  his  learned 
countryman,  asking  him  for  further  information,  and  express- 
ing his  desire  to  make  the  westward  voyage  which  Tosca- 
nelli had  suggested.  The  aged  philosopher  kindly  replied 
to  the  letter  of  the  obscure  map-maker. 

"I  see,"  he  wrote,  "that  you  have  the  grand  and  noble 
desire  to  sail  to  the  country  where  spices  spontaneously 
grow  ;  and  in  reply  to  your  letter  I  send  a  copy  of  one  which 
I  addressed  some  days  ago  to  a  friend  attached  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Most  Serene  King  of  Portugal,  and  who  had  the 
order  of  his  Highness  to  write  to  me  upon  the  same  subject." 

Furnished  thus  with  the  very  letter  which  had  been  writ- 
ten for  the  king's  own  eye,  and  encouraged  by  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  philosophers  of  the  age,  Columbus  hastened 
to  write  again  in  acknowledgment  of  the  favor  done  him, 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          529 

and  repeating  his  desire  to  undertake  the  voyage.  Tosca- 
nelli  again  wrote  approvingly. 

"I  commend,"  said  he,  "your  desire  to  sail  toward  the 
west ;  and  I  am  persuaded,  as  you  will  have  perceived  by 
my  preceding  letter,  that  while  the  expedition  which  you 
wish  to  undertake  is  not  an  easy  matter,  the  transit  from 
the  coasts  of  Europe  to  the  land  of  spices  is  certain,  if  you 
follow  the  course  which  I  have  marked  out.  You  would  be 
entirely  convinced  of  it  if,  like  myself,  you  had  had  oppor- 
tunity of  conversing  with  a  great  number  of  travellers  who 
have  been  in  that  part  of  the  world.  Be  sure  that  you  will 
find  there  powerful  kingdoms,  great  cities  well  peopled;  and 
rich  provinces." 

Columbus  was  convinced.  His  plan  was  formed.  The 
object  of  his  life  was  plain  before  him.  And  although 
eighteen  years  were  to  elapse  before  he  could  execute  his 
purpose,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  ever  for  a 
moment  laid  aside.  It  is  not  certain  that  at  the  time  of  his 
correspondence  with  Toscanelli  in  the  summer  of  1474, 
he  had  ever  read  the  travels  of  Marco  Polo.  But  it  is 
evident  from  his  subsequent  letters  that  he  became  familiarly 
acquainted  with  them,  and  burned  with  desire  to  discover  an 
easier  access  to  those  rich  and  densely  peopled  countries,  so 
that  their  wealth  could  be  poured  into  Europe,  and  new 
empires  be  added  to  the  realm  of  the  church.  Cipango  — 
that  wonderful  island  described  by  Polo  as  lying  out  in  the 
ocean  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  the  coast  of  Asia  —  was 
the  frequent  subject  of  his  thoughts.  He  read  in  Marco  Polo 
that  the  sea  adjacent  contained  exactly  seven  thousand  four 
hundred  and  forty  islands,  mostly  inhabited,  and  abounding 
in  every  kind  of  precious  product,  spices,  drugs,  gems, 
pearls,  and  gold.  These  islands  he  expected  first  to  reach,  if 
ever  the  means  should  be  given  him  of  making  his  westward 


530  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

voyage ;  and  there  he  expected  to  gather  the  wealth  that 
would  enable  him  to  send  an  army  into  Palestine  for  the 
recovery  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

I  shall  not  repeat  the  affecting  story  which  has  been  told 
with  such  vividness  and  grace  by  Washington  Irving,  of 
Columbus'  weary  wanderings  from  court  to  court,  humbly 
begging  the  kings  of  the  earth  to  allow  him  to  pour  the 
wealth  of  Asia  into  their  coffers.  As  told  by  Mr.  Irving,  it 
is  as  fascinating  a  true  story  as  mortal  ever  related.  He 
prevailed  at  length.  He  prevailed  by  telling  the  pious 
Isabella,  Queen  of  Spain,  what  he  had  read  in  Marco  Polo 
of  the  Grand  Khan's  embassy  to  the  Pope,  asking  him  to 
send  a  hundred  Christian  priests  to  instruct  his  subjects  in 
the  Christian  religion.  I  firmly  believe  that  this  was  the 
fact  which  decided  Isabella  to  lend  her  influence  to  the 
undertaking.  He  sailed,  as  we  all  know,  at  sunrise  on 
Friday,  the  third  of  August,  1492,  from  Palos,  a  small  sea- 
port in  the  south  of  Spain,  with  three  small  ships  and  one 
hundred  and  twenty  men.  The  chart  which  he  took  with 
him  as  a  guide  was  founded  upon  the  one  sent  him  by  Tosca- 
nelli  eighteen  years  before.  Upon  it  was  delineated  the  line 
of  coast  from  Ireland  to  Guinea,  and  opposite  to  that  coast, 
directly  to  the  west,  the  extremity  of  India ;  while  between 
was  marked  the  Island  of  Cipango,  at  which  he  hoped  first 
to  arrive. 

On  Friday,  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  October  the 
twelfth,  1492,  ten  weeks  after  leaving  Spain,  a  gun  from 
one  of  his  vessels  announced  to  him  that  land  was  seen. 
As  the  day  dawned  there  was  gradually  disclosed  to  the  view 
of  the  enraptured  voyagers,  —  not,  indeed,  the  glittering 
minarets,  the  gorgeous  palaces,  and  mast-fringed  wharves 
of  the  city  of  Cipango,  —  but  a  verdant  and  beautiful  island, 
only  a  few  leagues  in  extent,  with  other  islands  dimly 


THE  REAL  MERITS  OF  COLUMBUS.          531 

visible  in  the  distance,  all  green,  wooded,  and  inviting. 
Columbus  had  no  doubt  that  he  had  reached  the  archipelago 
of  the  seven  thousand  four  hundred  and  forty  islands,  and 
that  Cipango  was  not  far  distant.  Being  certain  that  he 
was  in  India,  he  naturally  called  the  simple  inhabitants  of 
the  islands  by  the  name  of  Indians.  The  land  first  descried, 
and  first  trodden  by  the  voyagers,  was  the  island  of  San 
Salvador,  one  of  the  group  of  the  Bahamas. 

Columbus  died  without  knowing  that  he  had  discovered 
a  continent. 


THE   NAMING  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD. 


WHEN  Columbus  was  at  Seville,  before  his  first  westward 
voyage,  there  was  living  in  that  city  a  wealthy  Italian  mer- 
chant and  ship  chandler,  named  Juan  Berardi.  Columbus 
became  familiarly  acquainted  with  his  countryman ;  and, 
after  his  happy  return  from  the  new  world,  employed  him 
to  furnish,  equip,  and  provision  the  great  fleet  with  which 
he  sailed  a  second  time  to  the  Bahamas,  in  1493. 

The  chief  clerk  in  the  house  of  Berardi  at  that  time,  upon 
whom  devolved  the  charge  of  loading  the  vessels,  was  one 
Amerigo  Vespucci,  a  native  of  Florence,  forty-two  years  of 
age.  The  records  of  the  period  show  this  clerk  to  have  been 
very  busy  in  making  payments,  buying  provisions,  and  fur- 
nishing the  vessels ;  .and  it  was  through  him,  also,  that  the 
government  sometimes  made  large  payments  to  the  house  in 
which  he  was  employed.  The  Latinized  form  of  the  name 
of  this  clerk  is  Americus  Vespucius  ;  under  which  form  every 
reader  recognizes  the  navigator  whose  name  was  afterwards 
given  to  the  continent  we  inhabit. 

He  was  the  son  of  a  highly  respectable,  though  impover- 
ished, family  of  Florence ;  his  father  being  by  profession  a 
notary,  who  also  held  the  office  of  Secretary  to  the  Senate 
of  the  Florentine  Eepublic.  He  had  an  uncle,  Giorgio 
Antonio  Vespucci,  noted  in  Florence  as  a  scholar,  one  of  the 
Friars  in  a  convent  there,  and  the  master  of  the  convent 
school,  which  was  attended  by  sons  of  the  Florentine  no- 
bility. This  school  Amerigo  frequented,  and  thus  acquired 


534  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

an  education  which  probably  his  father  could  not  otherwise 
have  afforded  him.  As  he  grew  up,  the  young  man  became 
interested  in  the  favorite  sciences  of  the  times,  astronomy 
and  geography,  often  conversing  upon  them  with  the  illus- 
trious Toscanelli  himself,  who  had  so  much  to  do  with  the 
discovery  of  the  New  World.  He  also  learned  to  write  Latin 
pretty  well,  and  acquired  a  good  Italian  style. 

Destined  by  his  father  to  a  commercial  life,  he  appears  to 
have  made  voyages  to  various  parts  of  the  world ;  for  in 
speaking,  many  years  after,  of  South  America,  he  says,  w  I 
found  countries  more  fertile  and  more  thickly  inhabited  than 
/  have  ever  found  anywhere  else,  even  in  Asia,  Africa,  and 
Europe"  His  elder  brother  we  know  was  a  merchant  in  one 
of  the  cities  of  Asia  Minor,  where  he  prospered  for  many 
years,  but  finally  failed.  Americus,  too,  was  one  of  the 
unlucky  ones  of  the  earth.  In  his  thirty-ninth  year,  he  left 
his  native  city  for  Spain,  attracted  by  the  prospect  of  mend- 
ing his  fortunes  in  a  country  where  many  Italians  had  found 
profitable  employment.  In  1492,  we  find  him  settled  at 
Seville,  the  assiduous  clerk  of  a  mercantile  house,  directing 
the  various  activities  occupied  in  preparing  vessels  for  sea. 
Erelong  his  employer  died,  and  he  was  engaged  for  some 
time  in  settling  his  affairs  and  closing  the  business  of  the 
house.  Thrown  then  upon  his  own  resources,  he  entered 
into  an  employment  through  which  his  name  was  immor- 
talized. 

It  was  customary  in  that  age,  as  I  gather  from  scattered 
indications  in  the  old  chronicles,  for  every  sea-going  vessel 
to  have  on  board,  a  person  who  could  read  and  write  (rare 
accomplishments  then),  whose  duty  it*  was  to  keep  the  ship's 
accounts,  and  record  whatever  occurred  that  was  extraordiT 
nary.  He  was  called  by  a  title  which  may  be  translated 
Ship's  Secretary,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  an  officer  of 


THE   NAMING  OF   THE   NEW  WORLD.  535 

much  consequence  on  board ;  for  he  not  only  represented  the 
dignity  of  the  sciences  by  the  aid  of  which  the  vessel  made 
her  way  across  the  trackless  sea,  but  he  usually  had  particular 
charge  of  those  mysterious  instruments,  the  compass,  the  astro- 
labe, and  the  quadrant.  In  1497  the  King  of  Spain  offered 
him  such  a  post  as  this  in  an  expedition  of  four  vessels, 
which  he  was  about  to  despatch  on  a  voyage  of  discovery. 
Americus  accepted  T^he  offer,  and  the  expedition  sailed  from 
Cadiz  on  the  10th  of  May,  1497. 

From  the  Canary  Islands  the  expedition  sailed  in  a  south- 
westerly direction  until  the  voyagers  reached  the  coast  of 
Venezuela,  where  they  landed,  and  found  it  a  fertile  region, 
swarming  with  naked  savages  who  had  never  before  seen  the 
face  of  a  white  man.  They  coasted  southward  for  several 
hundred  miles,  often  going  on  shore,  even  spending  weeks 
and  months  among  the  innocent  and  hospitable  natives. 
The  expedition  returned  to  Spain,  after  an  absence  of  sev- 
enteen months  and  five  days,  bringing  two  hundred  and 
twenty-two  Indians,  who  were  sold  as  slaves.  What  more 
natural  than  that  Americus  should  write  home  an  account  of 
the  marvels  he  had  seen  ?  He  directed  his  letter  to  a  school- 
fellow, one  of  those  noblemen  who  had  attended  Friar 
Giorgio's  school  in  the  convent  at  Florence.  It  was  a  sim- 
ple, honest,  graphic  letter,  making  no  pretensions  of  any 
kind,  and  consisted  chiefly  of  minute  accounts  of  the  strange 
habits  and  customs  of  the  Indians.  He  says,  among  other 
things,  that,  "we  established  a  baptismal  font,  and  great  num- 
bers were  baptized,  calling  us,  in  their  language,  Carabi, 
which  means  men  of.  great  wisdom."  Most  of  his  letter  is 
occupied  with  similar  details.  The  king  and  queen  of  Spain 
received  him  with  distinction,  listening  to  his  narratives  with 
the  deepest  interest,  and  so  bountifully  rewarded  him,  that 
he  was  enabled  to  marry  a  lady  for  whom  he  had  cherished 
an  affection  for  several  years. 

34 


536  TKIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

In  the  spring  following  (May,  1499)  he  sailed  in  a  simi- 
lar capacity  in  a  second  expedition  sent  out  by  the  king  to 
explore  the  same  coasts.  On  this  voyage  he  coasted  Brazil 
southward  beyond  the  equator ;  and  a  bright  lookout  he  kept 
at  night  for  that  southern  polar  star  which,  for  many  years, 
navigators  imagined  must  play  the  part  in  the  southern  hem- 
isphere which  the  polar  star  did  in  the  northern.  "  Many  a 
time,"  says  this  observant,  intelligent  Italian,  "  I  lost  my 
night's  sleep  while  contemplating  the  movements  of  the  stars 
round  the  southern  pole."  After  sailing  along  the  coast  for 
more  than  two  thousand  miles,  the  ships  returned  to  Spain, 
bringing  home  pearls,  gold  dust,  emeralds,  amethysts,  some 
exquisite  crystals,  and,  alas !  two  hundred  and  thirty-two 
Indian  slaves. 

Again  Amerigo  wrote  a  long  letter  home,  to  a  great  noble- 
man of  Florence,  giving  an  account  of  this  voyage  also. 
Again  he  told  his  story  simply  and  modestly,  his  mind  being 
evidently  filled  and  overwhelmed  with  the  wonders  he  had 
seen. 

The  King  and  Queen  again  welcomed  him  to  court,  and 
more  cordially  than  before,  happy  to  place  among  the  crown 
jewels  the  pearls  and  gems  he  had  brought.  Ferdinand 
without  delay  prepared  a  new  expedition ;  but  before  it  was 
ready,  the  King  of  Portugal  tempted  Americus  into  his 
service ;  so  that  he  made  his  third  voyage  to  Brazil  in  the 
Ships  and  under  the  flag  of  Portugal.  This  third  voyage 
was  by  far  the  most  important  of  them  all ;  and  when  he 
returned  from  it,  he  had  that  to  tell  which  fully  justified 
both  himself  and  his  readers  in  supposing  that  he  was  the 
discoverer  of  another  quarter  of  the  globe.  What  else  could 
be  thought  from  such  passages  as  the  following  :  — 

"  From  Cape  Verd  we  sailed  on  a  southwesterly  course  until,  at 
the  end  of  sixty-four  days,  we  discovered  land,  which  on  many 


THE   NAMING  OF  THE   NEW  WORLD.  537 

accounts  we  concluded  to  be  Terra  Firma.  We  coasted  this  land 
about  eight  hundred  leagues  in  a  direction  west  by  south  .  .  . 
until  we  entered  the  Torrid  Zone,  and  passed  to  the  south  of  the 
equator,  and  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn.  We  navigated  here  four 
months  and  twenty-seven  days,  seeing  neither  the  polar  star  nor 
the  Great  or  Little  Bear.  We  discovered  here  many  beautiful  con- 
stellations, invisible  in  the  northern  hemisphere,  and  noted  their 
marvellous  movements  and  grandeur.  .  .  ,  In  effect  my  navigation 
extended  to  the  fourth  part  of  the  world" 

In  another  letter  to  the  same  Florentine  nobleman,  he 
says:  — 

"Carefully  considered,  these  countries  appear  truly  to  form 
another  world,  and  therefore  we  have,  not  without  reason,  called  it 

THE  NEW  WORLD." 

Both  of  the  letters  which  treat  of  this  momentous  third 
voyage  give  us  the  impression  that  their  author  was  an  intel- 
ligent and  gifted  man,  who  was  eager  to  make  other  men 
partakers  of  the  honest  joy  with  which  he  himself  hailed  the 
addition  of  a  continent  to  the  domain  of  civilization.  There 
is  a  little  pardonable  vanity,  it  is  true,  in  his  mentioning 
how  much  credit  he  won  by  his  knowledge  of  navigation. 
He  says  that  on  one  occasion  no  pilot  in  the  fleet  could 
tell  where  they  were  within  fifty  leagues,  and  they  might 
have  been  lost  but  for  his  reckoning. 

w On  this  occasion,"  he  says,  "I  acquired  no  little  glory 
for  myself;  so  that  from  that  time  forward  I  was  held  in 
such  estimation  by  my  companions  as  the  learned  are  held  in 
by  people  of  quality.  I  explained  the  sea  charts  to  them, 
and  made  them  confess  that  the  ordinary  pilots  were  igno- 
rant of  cosmography,  and  knew  nothing  in  comparison  with 
myself." 

He  had  glory  enough  on  his  return  to  Portugal.  The  king 
received  him  magnificently ;  and  his  vessel,  battered  by  the 


538  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

waves  and  unseaworthy,  was  broken  up,  and  parts  of  it 
were  carried  in  procession  to  a  church,  where  they  were 
hung  up  as  precious  relics.  The  people  of  far-off  Florence 
also  read  his  letters  with  pride  and  delight.  His  return  was 
celebrated  by  religious  ceremonies  at  Florence,  and  honors 
were  bestowed  upon  members  of  the  Vespucci  family  who 
were  then  residing  there.  We  cannot  wonder  that  his  fame, 
for  a  moment,  should  have  eclipsed  the  imperishable  glory 
of  Columbus,  then  an  old  man,  deprived  of  his  employments, 
cheated  of  his  revenues,  and  anxious  for  his  daily  bread. 
Nor  had  Columbus  published  any  entertaining  letters,  giving 
accounts  of  his  discoveries. 

Upon  the  fourth  voyage  of  Vespucci,  when  he  sailed  with 
six  ships  along  the  coast  of  Africa,  I  need  not  dwell,  for  it 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  naming  of  the  new  world.  Five 
of  the  vessels  of  this  fleet  were  lost,  and  the  one  in  which 
Vespucci  sailed  alone  returned  to  tell  the  tale.  He  landed 
at  Lisbon,  June  the  eighteenth,  1504,  a  poor  man ;  for  the 
voyage  had  proved  a  failure  in  every  respect,  and  the  King 
of  Portugal  was  in  no  humor  to  repeat  the  experiment. 
After  adding  an  empire  to  the  dominions  of  the  Portuguese 
king  without  reward,  Amerigo  returned  to  Seville,  where 
he  found  Columbus  sick,  poor,  and  disheartened,  — his  son 
Diego  at  court,  soliciting  justice  from  the  Spanish  sovereigns. 
Columbus  charged  him  with  a  letter  to  his  son,  in  which  he 
speaks  of  the  Florentine  in  the  most  friendly  terms. 

"He  has  always  been  desirous  of  serving  me,"  wrote 
Columbus,  "  and  is  an  honorable  man,  though  fortune  has 
been  unpropitious  to  him,  as  to  many  others,  and  his  labors 
have  not  brought  him  the  profit  which  he  had  reason  to 
expect.  He  goes  on  my  account,  and  with  a  great  desire 
to  do  something  which  may  redound  to  my  advantage,  if 
it  is  in  his  power.  ...  I  have  informed  him  of  all 


THE   NAMING   OF   THE   NEW  WORLD.  539 

the  payments  which  have  been  made  to  me,  and  what  is 
due." 

This  letter,  dated  February  the  fifth,  1505,  is  an  affecting 
proof,  both  of  the  wrongs  done  to  Columbus,  and  of  the  in- 
nocence of  Vespucci  toward  the  great  discoverer.  At  court 
Vespucci  did  better  for  himself  than  he  could  for  his  illustri- 
ous client,  for  the  king  appeared  to  seize  eagerly  the  chance 
of  showing  the  world  that  he  could  make  discoveries  without 
the  aid  of  Columbus.  The  king  made  Vespucci  a  citizen  of 
Spain,  presented  him  with  twelve  thousand  maravedis  ;  and 
a  few  months  after,  when  Columbus  was  no  more,  gave  him 
the  place  of  Chief  Pilot,  with  a  salary  of  seventy-five  thou- 
sand maravedis  per  annum. 

Americus  gave  to  the  world  a  little  work,  called  The  Four 
Voyages,  which  had  long  been  handed  about  in  manuscript 
among  his  royal  and  noble  friends ;  while  his  manuscript 
letters  had  had  great  currency  in  Italy.  As  early  as  1504, 
a  suggestion  had  appeared  in  print  that  the  coasts  described 
by  him  should  be  named  Amerigo's  land.  The  Professor  of 
Geography  then  at  the  College  of  Saint-Die,  in  Lorraine,  was 
Martin  Waldseemiiller,  who,  as  the  custom  then  was  with 
professors,  was  an  author  and  bookseller  also.  In  1507, 
he  wrote  a  small  work  upon  geography,  in  Latin,  the  title 
of  which  may  be  translated  thus  :  — 

"  An  Introduction  to  Cosmography,  together  with  the  Outlines  of 
Geometry  and  Astronomy  appertaining  thereunto.  To  which  are 
added,  The  Four  Voyages  of  Americus  Vespucius." 

In  this  work  the  author,  ignorant  of  the  superior  claims 
of  Columbus,  boldly  says,  that  to  Americus  Vespucius 
belongs  the  right  to  give  his  name  to  "  the  fourth  part  of  the 
world  " ;  and  he  further  suggested,  that  since  Europa  and 
Asia  were  named  after  women,  it  would  be  proper,  in  nam- 


540  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ing  the  new  world,  to  use  the  feminine  form,  and  call  it 
AMERICA.  This  volume  enjoyed  great  popularity  in  Europe 
for  many  years,  for  it  ministered  to  the  prevailing  curiosity 
of  the  age  ;  and  thus  the  name  of  America  was  fixed  inefface- 
ably  to  all  that  region  which  Americus  had  explored.  For 
fifty  years  the  name  was  confined  to  that  part  of  the  conti- 
nent; but  gradually  it  was  applied  to  the  entire  western 
world,  and  Amerigo's  Land  received  the  name  of  Brazil, 
after  a  valuable  wood  that  'grew  there.  Americus,  the 
innocent  cause  of  this  injustice,  died  at  Seville  in  1512. 
Absorbed  as  he  was,  during  the  last  few  years  of  his  life,  in 
the  arduous  duties  of  his  office,  he  may  never  have  learned 
of  the  use  which  the  Lorraine  Professor  had  made  of  part  of 
his  name,  still  less  could  he  have  foreseen  that  the  name 
would  finally  be  applied  to  what  proved  to  be  in  reality 
more  than  "  the  fourth  part  of  the  world." 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  our  continent  was  named,  not 
after  the  great  man  who  discovered  it,  but  after  him  who 
first  made  it  known. 


THE  WISEST  OF  THE  PAGANS. 

MARCUS  AURELIUS,  AND  SOME  OF  HIS  THOUGHTS. 

THIS  man,  the  sixteenth  of  the  Roman  Emperors,  born  A. 
D.  121,  has  been  greatly  glorified  in  modern  times  by  anti- 
Christian  authors.  "Behold,"  say  they,  "this  virtuous 
Pagan !  What  Christian  has  ever  been  more  pure,  more 
just,  more  magnanimous,  more  modest  than  he?  If  such 
virtue  as  his  can  be  attained  by  the  unassisted  efforts  of  man, 
what  need  is  there  of  miraculous  revelation?  "  Voltaire,  and 
other  writers  of  his  age,  never  lose  an  opportunity  of  extoll- 
ing in  this  manner  the  virtuous  Marcus  Aurelius.  He  is  a 
standing  subject  with  them.  Of  late  years,  his  reign  has 
been  the  subject  of  particular  investigation  in  Europe,  and  to 
the  scanty  information  furnished  by  his  biographers,  much 
knowledge  has  been  added  by  those  patient  and  learned  men 
who  study  the  inscriptions,  medals,  and  coins  of  antiquity. 
His  character,  however,  bears  investigation  well,  and  the 
more  we  know  of  him  the  more  we  can  respect  him. 

He  was  not  born  heir  to  the  imperial  throne,  but  was  the 
son  of  private  persons  of  patrician  rank,  who  were  related 
to  the  Emperor  Adrian.  His  father  dying  when  he  was  only 
a  child,  he  was  adopted  by  his  grandfather,  and  this  brought 
him  into  nearer  intimacy  with  the  Emperor,  who  became 
warmly  attached  to  him,  greatly  admiring  his  good-nature, 
his  docility,  and  his  artless  candor.  His  early  education 
appears  to  have  been  conducted  with  equal  care  and  wisdom. 
*'  To  the  gods,"  he  says, "  I  am  indebted  for  having  had 


542  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

good  grandfathers,  good  parents,  a  good  sister,  good  teach- 
ers, good  associates,  good  kinsmen  and  friends,  nearly  every- 
thing good." 

He  thanks  the  gods,  also,  that  he  was  not  hurried  into  any 
offence  against  either  of  these  persons,  that  his  youth  was 
passed  in  purity  and  peace,  and  that  he  was  subjected  to  a 
ruler  and  father,  who  showed  him  that  it  was  possible  for 
a  man  to  live  in  a  palace  without  wanting  either  guards  or 
a  splendid  attire.  And  especially  he  thanks  the  gods  for 
the  excellent  teachers  that  were  given  him,  from  whom  he 
gays  he  received  clear  and  correct  instruction  how  to  live 
according  to  nature.  There  has  recently  been  discovered,  in 
the  library  of  the  Vatican,  a  familiar  correspondence  between 
this  studious  and  affectionate  youth,  and  one  of  his  teachers. 
He  wrote  to  his  teacher  as  lovingly  as  a  young  man  writes  to 
his  sweetheart. 

"  How  do  you  think,"  he  says,  in  one  of  the  letters,  "  that 
I  can  study  when  I  know  that  you  are  suffering  ? "  And 
again :  "  I  love  you  more  than  any  one  else  loves  you ;  more 
than  you  love  yourself.  I  could  only  compare  my  tender- 
ness for  you  with  that  of  your  daughter,  and  I  am  afraid  that 
mine  surpasses  hers.  Your  letter  has  been  for  me  a  treasure 
of  affection,  a  springing  fountain  of  goodness,  a  warming 
fire  of  love.  It  has  lifted  my  soul  to  such  a  degree  of  joy, 
that  my  words  are  incapable  of  uttering  it." 

He  tells  his  teacher,  elsewhere,  that  he  passes  many  hours 
of  the  night  in  study ;  and  he  makes  just  such  remarks  on 
the  books  he  reads,  upon  the  lectures  he  hears,  and  upon  the 
lessons  he  takes,  as  a  student  might  of  the  present  day.  He 
speaks  thus,  for  example,  of  one  of  the  most  noted  Greek 
teachers  of  oratory  :  — 

"  Three  days  ago,  I  heard  Polemon  declaim.  Do  you  wish  to 
know  what  I  think  of  him  ?  Well,  this  is  my  answer :  I  compare 


THE    WISEST   OF   THE    PAGANS.  543 

him  to  a  farmer  well  skilled  and  experienced,  who  asks  nothing  of 
his  farm  but  corn  and  grapes.  Doubtless,  he  has  happy  vintages 
and  abundant  harvests  ;  but  you  seek  in  vain  upon  his  domain  for 
the  beautiful  fig-tree  or  the  sweet  rose  ;  in  vain  you  wish  to  repose, 
under  the  shade  of  a  noble  tree.  All  is  useful,  nothing  is  agree- 
able ;  and  we  can  but  coldly  praise  that  which  has  not  charmed  us. 
You  will  think  my  judgment  rash,  perhaps,  considering  the  splen- 
did reputation  of  the  orator ;  but  it  is  to  you  that  I  am  writing,  my 
master,  and  I  know  that  my  rashness  does  not  displease  you." 

We  learn  from  these  pleasant  letters,  also,  that  he  was  a, 
merry  lad,  as  well  as  a  studious  one.  He  tells  his  teacher  an 
incident  of  one  of  his  rides  :  "  I  was  on  horseback,"  he  says, 
"and  had  gone  some  distance  on  the  road.  All  at  once  we 
perceived  directly  before  us  a  numerous  flock  of  sheep.  It 
was  a  solitary  place ;  two  shepherds,  four  dogs,  nothing 
else.  One  of  the  shepherds  said  to  the  other,  as  we  rode 
up,  e  Let  us  take  care ;  these  people  look  to  me  like  the 
greatest  thieves  in  the  world.'  I  heard  the  remark,  and, 
spurring- my  horse  vigorously,  I  dashed  into  the  flock.  The 
frightened  sheep  scattered  and  fled,  pell-mell.  The  shepherd 
hurled  his  crook  at  me,  and  it  came  near  hitting  the  horse- 
man who  rode  behind  me.  We  started  off  as  quick  as  pos- 
sible, and  the  poor  man,  who  expected  to  lose  his  flock,  lost 
nothing  but  his  crook." 

These  passages  give  us  a  lively  and  pleasing  idea  of  the 
innocent  youth  of  this  excellent  man,  who  appears  to  have 
enjoyed  every  advantage  of  education  which  the  Roman 
world  afforded,  and  to  have  improved  his  opportunities  of 
education  to  the  utmost.  He  seems  to  have  been  & 
natural  lover  of  wisdom  from  his  youth  up.  In  those  days, 
persons  who  wished  to  be,  or  to  be  thought,  philosophers, 
wore  a  particular  kind  of  dress,  and  lived  austerely,  —  prac- 
tices which  may  have  suggested  the  peculiar  costume  and 


544  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

rigorous  discipline  of  the  Catholic  orders.  As  early  as  his 
twelfth  year,  Marcus  Aurelius  assumed  the  philosopher's 
mantle,  ate  coarse  bread,  and  delighted  to  sleep  upon  the 
bare  ground.  His  mother,  fearing  for  his  health,  which 
really  suffered  from  his  austerities,  had  great  difficulty  in 
persuading  him  to  lie  at  night  upon  some  skins  of  animals. 
At  fifteen  he  was  betrothed  to  the  daughter  of  -ZElius  Csesar, 
then  heir  to  the  throne ;  and  from  this  time,  young  as  he 
was,  he  was  conspicuously  favored  and  employed  by  the 
Emperor  Adrian,  and  he  shone  in  the  view  of  mankind  as 
the  gifted  and  fortunate  youth  whom  the  Emperor  delighted 
to  honor. 

When  he  was  seventeen,  the  event  occurred  which  made 
him  an  important  personage  in  the  Empire.  The  heir  to 
the  imperial  throne  suddenly  died,  leaving  a  son  who  gave 
no  promise  of  ever  possessing  either  the  ability  or  the  virtue 
requisite  for  governing  a  great  Empire.  In  these  circum- 
stances the  aged  Adrian  adopted  as  his  heir  and  successor 
the  noble  Antoninus,  who  afterward  reigned  so  gloriously 
over  the  Empire  and  over  himself;  but  Antoninus  was 
adopted  on  condition  that  he  should  adopt,  as  his  heirs  and 
successors,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Lucius  Verus,  —  the  lattei 
being  the  son  of  that  -ZElius  Caesar  who  had  just  died.  A 
few  months  after,  Adrian  himself  died.  Antoninus  succeeded 
him,  and  during  the  whole  of  his  reign  Marcus  Aurelius 
lived  with  him  on  terms  of  the  closest  intimacy,  and  shared 
with  him  the  cares  and  duties  of  administration.  On  the 
death  of  Antoninus,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  the  indolent  and 
sensual  Lucius  Verus  succeeded ;  but  the  weight  of  empire 
was  borne  by  Marcus  alone.  Including  the  period  when  he 
was  the  most  trusted  counsellor  of  Adrian,  we  may  say  that, 
for  forty  years,  his  was  the  ruling  influence  in  the  Empire. 

The  history  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  during  this  long  period 


THE   WISEST   OF   THE   PAGANS.  545 

of  time,  is  the  history  of  the  great  Roman  Empire,  which 
then  embraced  the  civilized  world ;  and  that  history  cannot, 
of  course,  be  related  here.  I  can  say,  however,  that  he 
displayed,  in  his  high  place,  great  talents  and  great  virtues. 
He  improved  the  administration  of  justice ;  he  was  prompt 
in  relieving  private  and  public  distress.  Holding  war  in 
dread  and  abhorrence,  he  appears  never  to  have  engaged  in 
any,  except  to  defend  his  Empire  against  attack  or  conspir- 
acy. He  originated  a  system  of  educating  indigent  young 
men  of  noble  birth,  which  evidently  gave  rise  to  our  modern 
military  academies.  He  was  clement  and  forgiving,  even  to 
a  fault.  On  one  occasion,  when  they  brought  him  the  head 
of  a  nobleman  who  had  led  a  formidable  revolt,  he  rejected 
the  foul  offering  with  horror  and  disgust,  and  refused  to 
admit  into  his  presence  the  men  who  had  slain  him.  He 
wrote  to  the  Senate  with  regard  to  the  accomplices  of  this 
man :  — 

"  Shed  no  blood.  Recall  those  who  have  been  banished,  and 
restore  to  their  owners  the  estates  which  have  been  confiscated. 
Would  to  the  gods  that  I  could  recall  also  those  who  are  in  the 
tomb  !  Nothing  is  less  worthy  of  a  sovereign  than  to  avenge  his 
personal  injuries.  Accord,  then,  a  full  pardon  to  the  son  of  the 
guilty  man,  to  his  son-in-law,  to  his  wife.  And  why  speak  of  par- 
don? They  are  not  criminals.  Let  them  live  in  security,  in  the 
tranquil  possession  of  their  patrimony ;  let  them  be  rich,  and  free 
to  go  where  they  wish  ;  let  them  carry  into  every  country  testimo- 
nials of  my  goodness,  and  proofs  of  yours.  Procure  this  glory  to 
my  reign,  that  on  the  occasion  of  a  revolt  aimed  at  the  throne 
itself,  the  only  rebels  who  died  fell  upon  the  field  of  battle !  " 

These  are  noble  sentiments,  and  they  accord  with  the  gen- 
eral character  of  the  man  arid  his  government.  History 
records  but  one  similar  instance.  His  forbearance  and  mag- 
nanimity have  been  equalled  only  by  the  people  of  the 


546  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

United  States,  who  suppressed  the  most  stupendous  rebellion 
ever  seen,  and  freely  forgave  every  one  who  had  taken  part 
in  it. 

There  is  a  blot  upon  the  fame  of  this  great  ruler.  During 
his  reign,  the  innocent  and  harmless  Christians  continued  to 
be  persecuted.  He  regarded  the  Christians  as  disturbers 
of  the  peace,  foolish,  fanatical,  obstinate,  and  worthy  of 
death,  if  they  refused  to  abandon  their  religion.  He 
regarded  them,  in  fact,  as  the  people  of  Christian  coun- 
tries would  now  regard  a  body  of  men  who  should 
denounce  the  Christian  religion,  and  spend  their  utmost 
strength  in  subverting  it.  Great  pecuniary  interests,  let  us 
remember,  were  involved  in  the  support  of  paganism ;  mul- 
titudes of  people  gaining  subsistence  and  honor  by  serving 
the  altars,  by  providing  animals  for  the  sacrifice,  by  the 
manufacture  of  images  and  other  religious  objects, — just  as 
among  us  vast  numbers  of  persons  gain  their  livelihood  by 
serving  the  church.  Marcus  Aurelius,  with  all  his  wisdom 
and  tolerance,  sympathized  with  those  of  his  subjects  who 
thought  that  the  spread  of  Christianity  would  deprive  them 
of  their  means  of  living,  and  he  allowed  Christians  to  be 
tortured  and  put  to  death  in  considerable  numbers.  Voltaire 
denies  this,  and  apparently  with  perfect  sincerity  ;  but  recent 
investigation  establishes  it  beyond  a  doubt.  The  emperor, 
in  fact,  appears  to  have  been  ignorant,  and,  I  think,  unjus- 
tifiably ignorant,  of  the  men  stigmatized  as  Christians,  and 
of  the  religion  they  were  willing  to  die  for. 

"A  man,"  he  says,  "ought  always  to  be  ready  to  die; 
but  this  readiness  should  come  from  a  man's  own  judgment, 
not  from  mere  obstinacy,  as  with  Christians,  but  consider- 
ately and  with  dignity,  and  in  a  way  to  persuade  another, 
without  tragic  show." 

When  he  was  born,  Christianity  had  existed  in  the  world 


THE    WISEST    OF   THE    PAGANS.  547 

one  hundred  and  twenty-one  years  ;  and  when  he  died,  A.  D. 
180,  it  had  already  outlived  savage  persecutions,  and  had  its 
adherents  in  all  the  more  civilized  parts  of  Europe,  Africa, 
and  Asia. 

This  Emperor,  with  Christians  all  around  him,  appears 
never  to  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  inquire  personally 
into  their  character,  conduct,  or  doctrine.  Judging  from 
his  writings,  as  well  as  from  his  conduct  in  allowing  Chris- 
tians to  be  tortured  and  put  to  death,  I  should  say  that  his 
ignorance  of  Christianity  was  complete,  and  that  whatever 
he  knew,  or  guessed,  of  man's  duty,  origin,  and  destiny,  he 
had  reached  without  assistance  from  it.  Perhaps  readers 
may  feel  some  curiosity  to  know  the  opinions  of  this  great 
Pagan  on  some  of  the  subjects  most  interesting  to  man,  and 
I  have  consequently  gone  over  his  celebrated  Thoughts, 
and  selected  a  few  of  them  as  specimens. 

The  Emperor,  it  seems,  was  in  the  habit  of  jotting  down 
his  reflections  as  they  occurred  to  him,  whether  he  was 
residing  peacefully  in  his  palace,  or  whether  he  was  living 
in  camp,  reducing  to  subjection  a  revolted  province.  These 
thoughts  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  manuscript  now  in  the 
Vatican  Library  at  Rome.  They  were  written  in  the  Greek 
language,  and  were  first  printed,  with  a  Latin  translation,  in 
1570.  Since  that  time,  they  have  been  translated  into  many 
other  languages,  and  they  are  justly  regarded  as  one  of  the 
most  precious  relics  of  antiquity. 

"  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again?"  Upon  this  question, 
the  most  interesting  of  all  others  to  man,  the  emperor 
thought  much,  but,  apparently,  without  being  able  to  satisfy 
himself.  He  weighs  the  reasons  for  and  against  immortality. 
He  imagines  an  objector  to  the  doctrine  of  immortality 
asking,  — 

"If  souls  continue  to  exist  for  ever,  how  does  the  air 
contain  them?" 


548  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

He  answers  the  objection  thus  :  "  Bat  how  does  the  earth 
contain  the  bodies  of  those  who  have  been  buried  from  times 
so  remote  ?  For  as  the  dissolution  of  bodies  makes  room 
for  other  dead  bodies,  so  the  souls  which  are  removed  into 
the  air,  after  subsisting  for  some  time,  are  transmuted  and 
diffused,  and  assume  a  fiery  nature  by  being  received  into 
the  seminal  intelligence  of  the  universe,  and  in  this  way 
make  room  for  the  fresh  souls  which  come  to  dwell  there." 

w  This,"  he  continues,  "  is  the  answer  which  a  man  might 
give  on  the  hypothesis  of  souls  continuing  to  exist.  But  we 
must  not  only  think  of  the  number  of  bodies  which  are  thus 
buried,  but  also  of  the  number  of  animals  which  are  daily 
eaten  by  us  and  the  other  animals.  For  what  a  number  is 
consumed,  and  thus  in  a  manner  buried  in  the  bodies  of  those 
who  feed  on  them  I  And,  nevertheless,  this  earth  receives 
them." 

He  concludes,  therefore,  that  there  is  room  in  the  universe 
for  all  the  souls  which  have  ever  existed,  and  ever  shall 
exist ;  but  this  does  not  suffice  to  convince  him  of  immor- 
tality. In  another  place,  discoursing  upon  death,  he  asks 
whether  death  is  a  "  dispersion,  or  a  resolution  into  atoms, 
or  annihilation."  One  of  two  things,  he  thinks,  it  must  be  : 
extinction  or  change. 

"How  can  it  be,"  he  asks,  "that  the  gods,  after  having 
arranged  all  things  well  and  benevolently  for  mankind, 
have  overlooked  this  alone  :  that  good  men,  when  they  have 
once  died,  should  never  exist  again,  but  should  be  com- 
pletely extinguished?  But  if  this  is  so,  be  assured  that,  if 
it  ought  to  have  been  otherwise,  the  gods  would  have  done 
it.  But  because  it  is  not  so,  if  in  fact  it  is  not  so,  be  thou 
convinced  that  it  ought  not  to  have  been  so." 

It  is  pretty  evident  from  such  passages,  first,  that  Marcus 
Aurelius  did  not  know  whether  man  is  immortal  or  not; 


THE  WISEST  OF  THE  PAGANS.  549 

and,  secondly,  that  he  was  inclined  to  think  he  is  not.     He 
was  equally  in  the  dark  respecting  the  First  Great  Cause. 

"  There  is  one  light  of  the  sun,"  he  says,  "  though  it  is 
distributed  over  walls,  mountains,  and  other  things  infinite. 
There  is  one  common  substance,  though  it  is  distributed 
among  countless  bodies  which  have  their  several  qualities. 
There  is  one  SOUL,  though  it  is  distributed  among  infinite 
natures  and  individuals.  There  is  one  intelligent  soul, 
though  it  seems  to  be  divided." 

Again  he  says,  "  To  those  who  ask,  where  hast  thou  seen 
the  gods,  or  how  dost  thou  comprehend  that  they  exist,  and 
so  worshippest  them  ?  I  answer,  that  neither  have  I  seen  my 
own  soul,  and  yet  I  honor  it.  Thus,  then,  with  respect  to 
the  gods  ;  from  what  I  constantly  experience  of  their  power, 
I  comprehend  that  they  exist,  and  I  venerate  them." 

This  appears  tolerably  decisive;  but  I  should  suppose, 
from  other  passages,  that  the  Emperor  was  far  from  having 
a  clear  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  supreme  intelligence.  The 
following  sentences  are  full  of  interest :  — 

w  Either  there  is  a  fatal  necessity  and  invincible  order,  or 
a  kind  providence,  or  a  confusion  without  a  purpose,  and 
without  a  director.  If,  then,  there  is  an  invincible  neces- 
sity, why  dost  thou  resist?  But  if  there  is  a  providence 
which  allows  itself  to  be  propitiated,  make  thyself  worthy  of 
the  help  of  the  divinity.  But  if  there  is  a  confusion  without 
a  governor,  be  content  that  in  such  a  tempest  thou  hast  in 
thyself  a  certain  ruling  intelligence.  And  even  if  the  tem- 
pest carry  thee  away,  let  it  carry  away  the  poor  flesh,  the 
breath,  everything  else ;  for  the  intelligence,  at  least,  it  will 
not  carry  away." 

This  appears  to  have  been  a  favorite  thought  of  the  Em- 
peror, for  he  repeats  it  more  clearly  and  sharply,  thus  :  — 

"  Either  it  is  a  well-arranged  universe,  or  a  chaos  huddled 


/)50  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

together,  but  still  a  universe.  But  can  a  certain  order 
subsist  in  thee,  and  disorder  in  the  All?  And  this,  too, 
when  all  things  are  so  separated  and  diffused  and  sympa- 
thetic." 

He  has  a  curious  remark  upon  the  manner  in  which  men 
ought  to  pray. 

"A  prayer  of  the  Athenians:  'Rain,  rain,  O  dear  Zeus, 
down  on  the  ploughed  fields  of  the  Athenians,  and  on  tlie 
plains.'  In  truth,  we  ought  not  to  pray  at  all,  or  we  ought 
to  pray  in  this  simple  and  noble  fashion." 

So  much  for  this  noble  heathen's  idea  of  the  Deity.  It 
does  not  amount  to  much.  When,  however,  he  speaks  of 
man's  duties  to  his  fellow,  his  words  are  often  pregnant  with 
suggestive  wisdom.  The  following  sentences  might  be 
profitably  uttered  by  every  one  at  the  beginning  of  every 
day:  — 

"If  thou  workest  at  that  which  is  before  thee,  following 
right  reason  seriously,  vigorously,  calmly,  without  allowing 
anything  else  to  distract  thee,  but  keeping  thy  divine  part 
pure  as  if  thou  shouldst  be  bound  to  give  it  back  imme- 
diately;  if  thou  boldest  to  this,  expecting  nothing,  fearing 
nothing,  but  satisfied  with  thy  present  activity  according  to 
nature,  and  with  heroic  truth  in  every  word  and  sound  which 
thou  utterest,  thou  wilt  live  happy.  And  there  is  no  man 
who  is  able  to  prevent  this." 

This  is  indeed  an  exceedingly  fine  passage,  full  of  val- 
uable meaning,  and  one  which  only  a  great  soul  could  have 
uttered.  The  following  is  in  keeping  with  it :  — 

M  Everything  harmonizes  with  me  which  is  harmonious  to 
thee,  O  Universe  !  Nothing  for  me  is  too  early  nor  too  late, 
which  is  in  due  time  for  thee.  Everything  is  fruit  to  me 
which  thy  seasons  bring,  O  Nature ;  from  thee  are  all  things, 
in  thee  are  all  things,  to  thee  all  things  return." 


THE   WISEST   OF   THE   PAGANS.  551 

To  these  fine  passages  I  will  add  a  few  striking  sentences, 
gathered  here  and  there  in  his  writings  :  — 

"Observe  how  ephemeral  and  worthless  human  beings  are, 
and  what  was  yesterday  a  little  mucus,  to-morrow  will  be  a 
mummy  or  ashes.  Pass,  then,  through  this  little  space  of 
time  conformably  to  nature,  and  end  thy  journey  in  content, 
just  as  an  olive  falls  off  when  it  is  ripe,  blessing  nature  that 
produced  it,  and  thanking  the  tree  on  which  it  grew  " 

"  Be  like  the  promontory  against  which  the  waves  continu- 
ally break,  but  it  stands  firm  and  tames  the  fuiy  of  the  water 
around  it." 

"  If  it  is  not  right,  do  not  do  it ;  if  it  is  not  true,  do  not 
say  it." 

"  No  longer  talk  about  the  kind  of  man  that  a  good  man 
ought  to  be,  but  be  such." 

"  Imagine  every  man  who  is  grieved  at  anything  or  dis- 
contented, to  be  like  a  pig  which  is  sacrificed,  and  kicks  and 
screams." 

"  When  thou  art  offended  at  any  man's  fault,  forthwith 
turn  to  thyself,  and  reflect  in  what  like  manner  thou  dost  err 
thyself." 

"  Suppose  any  man  should  despise  thee,  let  him  look  to 
that  himself.  But  /will  look  to  this,  that  I  be  not  discov- 
ered doing  or  saying  anything  deserving  of  contempt." 

*  In  the  gymnastic  exercises,  suppose  that  a  man  has  torn 
thee  with  his  nails,  and  by  dashing  against  thy  head  has  in- 
flicted a  wound.  Well,  we  neither  show  any  signs  of  vexation, 
nor  are  we  offended,  nor  do  we  suspect  him  afterwards,  as  a 
treacherous  fellow;  and  yet  we  are  on  our  guard  against 
him ;  not,  however,  as  an  enemy,  nor  yet  with  suspicion, 
but  we  quietly  get  out  of  his  way.  Something  like  this  let 
thy  behavior  be  in  the  other  parts  of  life ;  let  us  overlook 
many  things  in  those  who  are  like  antagonists  in  the  gymna- 

35 


552  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

slum.     For  it  is  in  our  power,  as  I  said,  to  get  out  of  the 
way,  and  to  have  no  suspicion  or  hatred." 

"  Keep  thyself  simple,  good,  pure,  serious,  free  from 
affectation,  a  friend  of  justice,  a  worshipper  of  the  gods, 
kind,  affectionate,  strenuous  in  all  proper  acts ;  strive  to 
continue  to  be  such  as  philosophy  wished  to  make  thee. 
Reverence  the  gods  and  help  men.  Short  is  life.  There 
is  only  one  fruit  of  this  terrene  life,  a  pious  disposition  and 
social  acts." 

Such  are  some  of  the  thoughts  of  the  famous  Emperor 
Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus.  Upon  such  topics  as  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  the  supreme  power  of  the  universe,  the 
nature  of  death,  he  knew  simply  nothing ;  all  was  dream 
and  conjecture  with  him.  But  when  he  speaks  of  the  duty 
of  man  to  his  neighbor  and  to  himself,  matters  within  the 
compass  of  human  reason,  he  is  often  eminently  wise. 

Marcus  Aurelius  died  A.  D.  180,  aged  sixty-nine  years, 
of  which  he  had  reigned  nearly  twenty.  He  was  mourned 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Roman  Empire,  which  lost  in 
him  its  noblest  citizen.  Of  all  those  equestrian  bronze  statues 
erected  to  the  memory  of  Roman  Emperors,  but  one  has 
been  spared  by  the  destructive  tooth  of  time  and  the  avidity 
of  men.  It  is  that  of  Marcus  Aurelius. 


ARISTOTLE. 

HIS  KNOWLEDGE  AND  HIS  IGNOKANCE. 

*  IT  is  difficult,"  says  Mr.  Lewes,  the  author  of  an  excel- 
lent work  upon  the  science  of  the  ancients,  "to  speak  of 
Aristotle  without  exaggeration,  he  is  felt  to  be  so  mighty, 
and  is  known  to  be  so  wrong." 

He  appears  to  have  possessed  the  whole  of  the  knowledge 
which  man  had  accumulated  from  the  creation  to  his  time ; 
but,  along  with  that  knowledge,  he  imbibed  many  of  those 
errors  which  are  inseparable  from  knowledge  acquired  before 
the  true  methods  of  investigation  had  been  discovered. 
Hence  the  remark  quoted :  "  He  is  felt  to  be  so  mighty,  and 
is  known  to  be  so  wrong."  Mr.  Lewes  makes  another 
remark  concerning  Aristotle  which  I  think  is  exceedingly 
fine :  — 

"  It  is  the  glory  of  science  to  be  constantly  progressive.  After 
the  lapse  of  a  century,  the  greatest  teacher,  on  reappearing  among 
men,  would  have  to  assume  the  attitude  of  a  learner.  The  very  seed 
sown  by  himself  would  have  sprung  up  into  a  forest  to  obscure  the  view. 
But  he  who  rejoices  in  the  grandeur  of  the  forest,  must  not  forget 
by  whom  the  seeds  were  sown.  •  His  heritors,  we  are  richer,  but 
not  greater  than  he." 

This  is  a  just  and  beautiful  passage.  There  is  not  an 
intelligent  boy  or  girl  in  a  well-conducted  school  who  could 
not  set  Aristotle  right  on  a  thousand  points  of  science,  who 
would  not  laugh  at  many  of  his  mistakes ;  and  yet  it  is  not 


554  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

less  true,  that  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  intellects  that  has 
ever  appeared  among  men. 

It  is  strange  how  little  we  know  of  the  personal  history 
of  so  great  a  man.  The  chief  biographer  of  Aristotle,  and 
the  one  whom  all  the  others  copy,  was  not  born  until  nearly 
six  hundred  years  after  the  philosopher  was  dead.  We  pos- 
sess, therefore,  only  an  outline  of  his  life,  and  the  statements 
even  of  that  are  not  certain. 

On  the  coast  of  northern  Greece  there  was  a  small  seaport 
town,  called  Stagira;  and  there  Aristotle  was  born,  three 
hundred  and  eighty-four  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ. 
It  is  from  the  name  of  his  birthplace  that  he  is  frequently 
called  "  the  Stagirite."  His  father  was  a  renowned  physi- 
cian, who  practised  his  profession  at  the  court  of  the  king  of 
Macedon,  Amyntas  the  Second,  the  father  of  Philip,  and  the 
grandfather  of  Alexander  the  Great.  While  yet  a  boy,  he 
accompanied  his  father  to  the  residence  of  the  king,  and 
there  attracted  the  regard  of  Philip,  the  future  monarch. 

When  he  was  seventeen  years  of  age  his  father  died,  and 
left  him  a  large  fortune.  Some  of  his  biographers  state  that 
he  squandered  his  wealth,  and  was  obliged  to  sell  drugs  for  a 
livelihood.  This,  however,  is  improbable  and  incredible ; 
for  he  is  known  to  have  collected  in  the  early  part  of  his 
life  a  valuable  library.  Books  in  those  days  were  about  as 
costly  as  good  pictures  now  are  :  the  works  of  some  authors 
selling  for  as  many  talents  as  would  be  equivalent  to  four  or 
five  thousand  of  our  dollars.  His  writings  show  that  he  had 
mastered  all  the  literature  of  the  Old  World  which  wealth 
and  research  could  procure,  and  that  literature  must  have 
been  his  own. 

After  his  father's  death,  instead  of  squandering  his  patri- 
mony in  contemptible  dissipation,  he  went  to  Athens,  the 
centre  of  the  world  of  intellect,  which  was  something  like 


ARISTOTLE.  555 

going  to  one  of  the  great  universities  of  the  present  day. 
His  objects  were  to  buy  books,  to  get  knowledge,  and  to 
listen,  if  possible,  to  the  conversations  of  the  illustrious 
Plato.  Plato,  it  seems,  was  absent  when  he  arrived,  and  he 
studied  for  three  years,  while  awaiting  his  return,  in  order 
to  qualify  himself  for  admission  to  the  circle  of  the  great 
master's  disciples.  Once  admitted,  he  was  in  no  haste  to 
withdraw ;  for  he  had  dedicated  his  whole  existence  to  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge.  He  remained  for  seventeen  years 
the  pupil  and  friend  of  Plato ;  not  always,  however,  agree- 
ing in  opinion  with  his  master,  but  expressing  his  dissent 
occasionally  with  decision  and  force.  He  did  not  think  it 
was  any  part  of  friendship,  nor  even  of  discipleship,  to  ren- 
der a  servile  assent  to  the  opinion  of  his  instructor.  On 
the  contrary,  he  maintains,  in  one  of  his  works,  that  it  is 
our  duty  sometimes  to  attack  the  doctrines  held  by  dear 
friends  when  we  feel  them  to  be  erroneous. 

"  We  ought,"  he  adds,  "  to  slay  our  own  flesh  and  blood 
where  the  cause  of  truth  is  at  stake,  especially  as  we  are 
philosophers.  Loving  both,  it  is  our  sacred  duty  to  give  the 
preference  to  truth.  " 

In  one  respect  he  differed  very  much  from  Plato.  As  his 
mind  matured,  he  lost  in  some  degree  his  taste  for  those 
moral  and  metaphysical  discourses  in  which  Plato  delighted, 
and  was  powerfully  drawn  toward  physical  science,  in  which 
he  began  at  length  to  deliver  lectures  at  Athens.  The  bias 
to  such  studies  must  have  been  strong  in  Aristotle,  for  Plato 
cared  little  for  them,  and  the  general  taste  of  Athens  was 
rather  averse  to  natural  philosophy. 

Philip,  meanwhile,  who  had  ascended  the  throne  of  Mace- 
donia, had  not  -forgotten  the  son  of  his  father's  physician. 
Doubtless,  the  fame  of  Aristotle  had  spread  over  Greece, 
and  kept  the  recollection  of  him  alive  in  the  memory  of  the 


556  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Macedonian  king.  His  son  Alexander  being  then  fourteen 
years  of  age,  Philip  invited  Aristotle  to  reside  in  his  court, 
and  take  charge  of  the  Prince's  education.  This  was  the 
greatest  honor  which  a  king  could  then  bestow  upon  a  man 
of  learning.  Aristotle  accepted  the  invitation.  He  was 
received  at  court  with  the  greatest  honor,  and  Alexander 
became  tenderly  attached  to  his  instructor.  He  said  once 
that  he  honored  Aristotle  no  less  than  his  own  father ;  for 
if  to  the  one  he  owed  his  life,  he  owed  to  the  other  that 
which  made  life  worth  having.  Centuries  after  the  death  of 
Aristotle  there  still  existed  the  beautiful  grove,  with  its 
winding,  shady  walks  and  seats  of  stone,  which  King  Philip 
assigned  for  the  use  of  his  son  and  his  master,  in  the  midst 
of  which  he  built  a  commodious  school-room.  There  the 
philosopher  and  the  Prince  strolled  and  studied  and  con- 
versed for  the  space  of  four  years,  when  those  delightful 
days  suddenly  terminated  by  Alexander  being  compelled,  at 
eighteen  years  of  age,  to  become  the  regent  of  the  kingdom. 

But  Aristotle  still  remained  in  Macedon.  Alexander  gave 
him  royal  aid  towards  making  those  collections  upon  which 
his  scientific  works  are  founded.  It  is  said  that  the  young 
king  presented  him  with  a  sum  of  money  equal  to  a  million 
dollars  in  gold,  and  that  he  gave  orders  to  his  huntsman  and 
fisherman,  during  the  march  into  Asia,  to  furnish  him  with 
all  the  animals  he  might  desire  to  examine.  The  first  of 
these  statements  is  certainly  an  exaggeration ;  and  as  to  the 
second,  Humboldt  declares  that  in  no  work  of  Aristotle  is 
there  any  mention  of  an  animal  brought  to  the  knowledge  of 
Europeans  through  Alexander's  conquests.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  the  young  and  liberal  king  gave  impor- 
tant aid  to  his  preceptor  in  his  researches. 

After  seven  years'  residence  in  Macedonia,  he  returned  to 
Athens,  where  he  obtained  permission  to  teach  in  the  most 


ARISTOTLE.  557 

splendid  of  all  the  Athenian  places  of  instruction,  the 
Lyceum.  If  we  may  judge  from  the  descriptions  given  of 
it,  it  was  more  like  a  beautiful  university  town  than  a  col- 
lege ;  as  it  consisted,  we  are  told,  of  a  number  of  edifices 
surrounded  with  gardens,  avenues  of  trees,  and  groves ,  and 
boasted  its  porticoed  courts,  its  lecture-rooms,  covered 
promenades  and  baths,  its  course  for  foot-races,  and  a  circus 
for  wrestling.  In  this  agreeable  and  commodious  place, 
Aristotle  lived  for  thirteen  years,  teaching  the  young  men  of 
Greece,  who  gathered  eagerly  around  him,  and  hung  upon 
his  lips.  There  also  he  wrote  those  works  which  have  pre- 
served his  renown  to  the  present  hour. 

During  the  lifetime  of  Alexander,  the  politicians  of  Athens 
dared  not  molest  his  preceptor,  although  they  regarded  him 
with  some  suspicion  as  the  friend  of  their  country's  foe.  But 
when  the  great  news  came  that  Alexander  was  no  more, 
Aristotle  was  no  longer  safe  in  Athens.  A  pretext  was  soon 
found  for  his  persecution ;  he  was  accused,  like  Socrates,  of 
irreligion.  He  had  the  good  sense  not  to  confront  an  igno- 
rant and  prejudiced  mob,  but  left  the  city  in  time,  in  order, 
as  he  said,  "  not  to  give  the  Athenians  a  second  opportunity 
of  committing  a  sacrilege  against  philosophy." 

In  his  retirement  he  wrote  a  defence  of  his  conduct ;  but 
the  Athenians,  when  he  did  not  appear  in  answer  to  the 
summons,  pronounced  him  guilty,  deprived  him  of  all  the 
rights  and  honors  they  had  conferred  upon  him,  and  sen- 
tenced him  to  death.  The  sentence  harmed  him  not.  Worn 
by  excessive  study,  and  wounded,  perhaps,  by  the  ingrati- 
tude of  the  people  whose  city  he  had  rendered  glorious  by 
living  in  it,  he  died  soon  after  his  retreat,  in  the  sixty-third 
year  of  his  age. 

He  was  twice  married,  and  had  children  both  of  his  own 
and  by  adoption.  His  will,  which  has  come  down  to  us, 


558  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

contains  thoughtful  and  kind  provisions  for  his  wife,  his 
children,  and  his  slaves.  He  expressly  ordered  that  none 
of  his  slaves  should  be  sold,  but  that  all  should  be  set  free 
on  attaining  maturity. 

Those  who  have  not  forgotten  their  Greek  Reader,  re- 
member the  list  of  Aristotle's  wise  sayings  given  in  that 
work.  Here  are  two  or  three  of  them.  Being  asked  in 
what  the  educated  differ  from  the  uneducated,  he  said,  "  As 
the  living  differ  from  the  dead."  "What  grows  old  soon?" 
asked  one.  His  reply  was,  *  Gratitude."  Being  blamed 
for  giving  alms  to  an  unworthy  person,  he  said,  tfl  gave; 
but  it  was  to  mankind."  Once  when  he  was  sick,  he  said  to 
the  doctor,  "  Do  not  treat  me  as  you  would  a  driver  of  oxen 
or  a  digger,  but  tell  me  the  cause,  and  you  will  find  me 
obedient." 

The  world  came  very  near  losing  all  the  works  of 
Aristotle  before  they  had  seen  the  light  of  publicity. 
The  philosopher  bequeathed  his  numerous  writings  to  his 
friend  Theophrastus,  who,  after  having  been  his  favorite 
disciple,  had  become  his  successor  as  chief  lecturer  in  the 
Lyceum  at  Athens.  Theophrastus  at  his  death  left  them 
to  his  favorite  pupil  Neleus,  who  conveyed  them  from 
Athens  to  a  city  in  Asia  Minor,  where  he  lived.  When 
Neleus  died,  the ,  precious  manuscripts  became  the  prop- 
erty of  his  heirs,  who,  not  being  men  of  letters,  valued 
them  only  as  so  much  property. 

By  this  time  the  works  of  philosophers  and  men  of 
genius  had  acquired  a  great  pecuniary  value ;  for  many 
kings  had  caught,  from  the  example  of  Alexander,  the 
fashion  of  collecting  manuscripts  and  founding  libraries. 
Literary  works  had  become  indeed  objects  of  such  intense 
desire  to  kings  and  princes,  that  they  began  to  be  unsafe, 
because  they  were  so  easily  stolen.  The  heirs  of  Neleus, 


ABISTOTLE.  559 

therefore,  while  awaiting  some  royal  purchaser  for  the  works 
of  Aristotle,  did  with  them  what  the  ancients  were  accus- 
tomed to  do  with  money  and  jewels,  — they  buried  them  in 
the  earth.  And  in  the  earth  they  remained  till  they  were 
forgotten.  Much  buried  treasure  of  other  descriptions  was 
lost  in  ancient  times  by  the  death  of  the  sole  possessors  of 
the  secret.  Travellers  tell  us  that,  to  this  day,  a  large 
amount  of  gold,  silver,  and  jewels  is  annually  lost  in  this 
way,  in  China,  India,  and  other  parts  of  Asia. 

The  writings  of  Aristotle  narrowly  escaped  destruction ; 
for  it  was  only  after  they  had  been  buried  one  hundred  and 
thirty  years,  that  they  were  discovered,  and  then  only  by 
accident.  They  were  much  defaced  by  the  dampness  of 
the  earth,  and  some  of  the  writing  was  obliterated.  By 
a  happy  chance,  a  wealthy  disciple  of  Aristotle  heard  of 
the  discovery  of  the  books,  bought  them,  and  employed 
several  copyists  in  transcribing  them.  Many  pages  and 
•some  whole  treatises  were  lost  beyond  recovery,  and  it  is 
supposed  that  many  of  the  errors  now  found  in  the  text 
were  owing  to  the  well-meant  endeavors  of  the  purchaser 
to  restore  sentences  and  passages  that  were  partly  effaced. 

The  works  thus  accidentally  preserved  were  conveyed  to 
Athens,  where  they  remained  until  the  city  was  captured  and 
plundered  by  Scylla,  by  whom  they  were  carried  away  to 
Eome,  with  a  vast  amount  of  other  literary  treasure.  This 
was  a  fortunate  circumstance.  At  Rome  they  attracted  the 
attention  of  a  learned  Greek,  who  made  additional  copies 
of  them.  At  length,  about  three  hundred  years  after  the 
death  of  Aristotle,  his  works  may  be  said  to  have  been  pub- 
lished :  that  is,  copies  of  them  became  an  article  of  literary 
merchandise,  and  anybody  could  have  a  copy  who  could 
afford  to  pay  a  sum  of  money  equal  to  four  or  five  thousand 
dollars.  From  that  time  to  about  two  centuries  ago,  the 


560  TKIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

works  of  Aristotle  constituted  of  themselves  an  important 
portion  of  the  scientific  property  of  man.  It  is  only  during 
the  last  two  hundred  years  that  discovery  has  rendered  his 
scientific  writings  valueless,  and  only  interesting  as  a  curi- 
osity of  the  past. 

It  is  surprising  how  little  he  knew  that  could  be  depended 
upon ;  and  all  because  he  did  not  follow  his  own  maxim : 
"Men  who  desire  to  learn,  must  first  learn  to  doubt;  for 
science  is  only  the  solution  of  doubts. " 

He  did  not  doubt  enough.  He  took  things  too  much  for 
granted.  He  believed  too  easily.  Although  a  writer  on 
anatomy,  for  example,  it  is  almost  certain  that  he  never 
examined  the  inside  of  the  human  body,  much  less  dis- 
sected one.  Imagine  a  doctor  of  the  present  day  giving 
such  an  account  of  the  liver  as  the  following :  — 

"  The  liver  is  compact  and  smooth,  shining  and  sweet,  though 
somewhat  bitter ;  and  the  reason  is,  that  the  thoughts  falling  on  it 
from  the  intellect,  as  on  a  mirror,  might  terrify  it  by  employing* 
a  bitterness  akin  to  its  nature ;  and  threateningly  mingle  this 
bitterness  with  the  whole  liver,  so  as  to  give  it  the  black  color  of 
bile  ;  or,  when  images  of  a  different  kind  are  reflected,  sweetening 
its  bitterness  and  giving  place  to  that  part  of  the  soul  which  lies 
near  the  liver,  giving  it  rest  at  night,  with  the  power  of  divination 
in  dreams.  Although  the  liver  was  constructed  for  divination,  it 
is  only  during  life  that  its  predictions  are  clear ;  after  death  its 
oracles  become  obscure,  for  it  becomes  blind." 

This  is  wonderfully  absurd.  Elsewhere  he  informs  us  that, 
in  his  opinion,  the  seat  of  the  soul  is  that  portion  of  the 
brain  called  the  Pineal  gland,  a  small,  solid  mass  of  nervous 
matter  in  the  midst  of  the  lobes  of  the  brain.  The  reason 
which  this  great  philosopher  gives  for  so  thinking  is,  that 
"  all  the  other  parts  of  the  brain  are  double,  and  thought  is 
single." 


ARISTOTLE.  561 

Man's  soul  thus  being  in  the  head,  he  feels  it  necessary  to 
explain  why  we  are  provided  with  bodies  and  limbs.  Since 
the  soul  is  completely  enclosed  within  the  skull,  why  should 
we  be  encumbered  with  such  a  great  mass  of  unspiritual 
matter?  The  gods  foresaw,  he  tells  us,  that  the  head,  being 
round,  would  roll  down  the  hills,  and  could  not  ascend  steep 
places ;  and  to  prevent  this,  the  body  was  added  as  a  carrier 
and  locomotive  of  the  head. 

He  has  some  strange  ideas  with  regard  to  the  heavenly 
bodies.  "The  heat  and  light  of  the  stars,"  he  says,  "are 
evolved  from  the  friction  of  their  bodies  against  the  air;  for 
motion  naturally  produces  heat,  even  in  wood  and 'stones; 
and  still  more  must  this  be  the  case  with  bodies  which  are 
nearer  to  fire ;  and  air  is  nearer  to  fire,  as  may  be  concluded 
from  the  heat  of  arrows,  which  become  so  heated  that  some- 
tunes  their  lead  is  melted ;  and  when  they  are  heated,  the  air 
surrounding  them  must  be  heated  also.  Motion  through  the 
air  generates  heat.  Of  the  heavenly  bodies,  each  is  moved 
in  its  own  circle,  so  that  it  does  not  become  hot,  but  the  air 
surrounding  it  is  made  hot,  and  there  hottest  where  the  sun 
is.  We  must  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  stars  are  neither 
made  of  fire  nor  moved  in  fire." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Aristotle  should  have  been  igno- 
rant of  astronomy,  because  in  his  day  the  instruments  did  not 
exist  by  which  the  stars  are  observed,  and  the  science  of 
astronomy  had  not  begun  to  be.  It  is,  however,  very  sur- 
prising that  he  should  have  been  so  ignorant  of  the  structure 
of  the  human  body,  and  even  of  the  bodies  of  animals.  He 
seems  never  to  have  taken  the  slightest  pains  to  test  his 
conclusions  by  experiment,  or  even  by  close  observation. 
He  was  satisfied  to  conjecture,  and  was  contented  with 
an  explanation,  if  it  only  seemed  reasonable  to  his  own 
mind. 


562  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

His  errors  of  mere  statement  respecting  the  body  are 
numerous  and. remarkable.  He  says,  for  example,  that  the 
human  kidney  is  lobed ;  that  man  has  but  eight  ribs ;  that 
the  heart  has  only  three  chambers ;  that  the  brain  contains 
no  blood ;  and  that  the  back  part  of  the  human  skull  is 
empty  :  all  of  which  are  manifest  errors.  His  idea  of  diges- 
tion is  very  curious.  He  supposed  that  the  food  in  the 
stomach  was  cooked  by  the  heat  of  the  body,  and  that  while 
it  is  cooking  the  liquefied  food  steams  up  into  the  heart, 
where  it  is  converted  into  blood.  Nature,  he  says,  being  a 
good  economist,  gives  the  best  part  of  the  food  to  the  noblest 
parts  of  'the  body ;  as  masters  eat  the  best  portions  of  an 
animal,  the  slaves  the  inferior  parts,  and  the  dogs  the 
refuse. 

Since  the  interior  of  the  body  is  so  hot  that  food  is  cooked 
merely  by  the  natural  heat,  he  felt  it  necessary  to  explain 
why  the  body  did  not  get  too  hot,  and  consume  itself.  This 
would  certainly  be  the  case,  he  says,  if  we  did  not  continually 
inhale  cool  air  I  Breathing  is  the  cooling  process ;  and  air 
alone,  he  adds,  would  answer  the  purpose,  because  its  light- 
ness enables  it  to  penetrate  into  many  parts  of  the  body  which 
water  could  not  enter. 

He  misstates  many  things  which  he  could  have  verified 
with  the  utmost  ease.  He  says,  for  example,  that  a  man  has 
more  teeth  than  a  woman,  and  that  the  ox  and  the  horse  have 
each  a  bone  in  its  heart.  Mice,  he  informs  us,  die  if  they 
drink  in  summer ;  and  all  animals  bitten  by  mad  dogs  go 
mad,  except  man.  He  also  says,  that  horses  feeding  in 
meadows  suffer  from  no  disease  except  gout,  which  destroys 
their  hoofs,  and  that  one  sign  of  this  disease  is  the  appear- 
ance of  a  deep  wrinkle  beneath  the  nose. 

He  gives  the  following  explanation  of  the  limbs  of  animals 
and  men:  — 


ARISTOTLE.  563 

"  Animals  are  four-footed,  because  their  souls  are  not  powerful 
enough  to  carry  the  weight  of  their  bodies  in  an  erect  position. 
Therefore  all  animals  in  relation  to  man  are  dwarfs  ;  for  dwarfs  are 
those  which  have  the  upper  parts  large  and  the  organs  of  progres- 
sion small.  In  man  there  is  a  proper  proportion  between  the  trunk 
and  the  limbs ;  but  when  newly  born,  the  trunk  is  large  and  the 
limbs  small.  Hence  infants  crawl,  and  cannot  walk  ;  at  first  they 
cannot  even  crawl,  nor  move  alone,  for  all  infants  are  dwarfs.  On 
the  contrary,  among  quadrupeds  the  under  part  is  at  first  the 
larger ;  but  as  they  develop,  the  upper  part  becomes  the  larger. 
Hence  colts  are  little  if  at  all  shorter  than  horses,  and  when  they 
are  young  they  can  touch  their  heads  with  their  hind  feet,  which 
they  cannot  do  as  adults.  Hence  all  animals  are  less  intelligent 
than  man.  And  among  men  children  and  dwarfs  are  less  intelligent 
than  the  adult  and  well-grown.  The  reason  is,  as  before  stated, 
because  the  physical  principle  is  very  difficult  to  move,  and  is  cor- 
poreal." 

Into  such  errors  can  the  ablest  of  men  fall  when  they  try 
to  use  their  minds  before  they  have  learned  to  use  their 
eyes.  Aristotle  loved  to  think,  but  he  was  averse  to  the 
patient  observation  and  the  exact  experiment  by  which 
alone  scientific  knowlege  is  gained.  His  works  swarin  with 
curious  examples  of  ingenious  reasoning,  founded  more  upon 
fancy  than  fact.  I  will  conclude  with  one  more  specimen. 

"The  hand,"  says  he,  "is  an  instrument.  Nature,  like  a 
rational  being,  always  bestows  instruments  on  those  who 
can  use  them.  For  it  is  better  to  give  a  flute  to  a  flute- 
player,  than  to  make  a  flute-player  of  one  who  possesses  a 
flute ;  since  the  inferior  ought  to  be  given  to  the  greater  and 
nobler,  and  not  the  nobler  and  greater  to  the  inferior.  If, 
therefore,  it  is  better  so,  and  as  nature  always  acts  for 
the  best  when  possible,  evidently  man  has  hands  because  he 
is  the  most  intelligent,  and  is  not  the  most  intelligent 
because  he  has  hands." 


564  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

Upon  such  science  as  this  the  human  mind  subsisted  for 
fifteen  hundred  years ;  for  such  was  the  overshadowing 
greatness  of  Aristotle's  fame,  and  such  the  veneration  felt 
by  scholars  for  everything  written  in  Greek,  that  it  was  an 
act  of  great  mental  courage,  during  all  that  long  period,  to 
call  in  question  any  statement  made  by  the  Philosopher  of 
Stagira. 


INVENTION  OF  THE  DAGUEKEOTTPE. 


EVERY  washerwoman  is  a  daguerrotypist  sometimes. 
Take  a  sheet  of  unbleached  cotton,  and  spread  it  on  the 
grass  in  the  sun ;  place  in  the  middle  of  it  a  low  stool,  or  any 
other  object  which  will  shade  a  portion  of  the  sheet  from  the 
sun ;  leave  the  whole  exposed  to  sun,  rain,  and  dew  for  two 
weeks.  At  the  end  of  that  period  the  sheet  will  have  become 
perfectly  white,  except  the  part  upon  which  the  sun  has 
not  shone,  and  that  will  retain  its  original  yellowish  hue. 
Behold,  a  daguerrotype !  a  dingy  yellow  picture  upon  a 
field  of  white.  The  complete  daguerrotype  apparatus  merely 
assists  the  sun  to  produce  the  picture  more  distinctly,  more 
durably,  more  quickly,  and  upon  a  more  convenient  material. 

The  first  experiment  ever  made  towards  sun-painting  was 
performed  by  Dr.  Priestley,  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago, 
and  that  was  identical  in  principle  with  the  bleaching  pro- 
cess just  described.  Instead  of  the  grassy  field,  Dr.  Priest- 
ley used  a  glass  bottle,  on  the  outside  of  which  he  deposited 
some  chloride  of  silver,  and  over  that  he  placed  a  piece  of 
paper  with  letters  cut  in  it  with  a  penknife.  Thus  prepared, 
the  bottle  was  exposed  to  the  sun.  Where  the  light  had 
fallen  the  chloride  of  silver  had  turned  black,  but  all  the  parts 
shaded  by  the  paper  remained  as  white  as  before.  In  this 
experiment  the  action  of  the  sun  produced  black  instead  of 
white,  but  the  principle  was  the  same,  and  the  result  was 
similar,  —  a  dark  picture  on  a  white  surface. 


566  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE . 

Many  philosophers  made  experiments  of  this  kind  before 
Daguerre  was  born,  but  those  experiments  had  no  useful 
result,  because  the  pictures  produced  soon  faded  away  in  the 
light,  and  no  apparatus  was  invented  capable  of  producing 
such  pictures  with  facility  and  despatch.  Many  inven- 
tors also  contributed  their  part  towards  the  invention  of 
such  apparatus  in  our  own  day.  It  is,  however,  I  believe, 
agreed  that  the  man  to  whom  the  chief  honor  of  the  inven- 
tion is  due,  was  Louis  Jacques  Mande  Daguerre,  born  near 
Paris  in  1789. 

Of  the  early  life  of  Daguerre  nothing  has  been  as  yet  given 
to  the  public  by  his  French  biographers.  We  first  hear  of 
him  as  an  industrious  pupil  of  a  celebrated  Paris  scene- 
painter  named  Degoti,  who  was  the  scene-painter  to  the 
grand  opera.  At  this  period  of  his  life,  Daguerre  painted 
and  exhibited  several  figure  pictures,  concerning  the  merit 
of  which  nothing  is  now  remembered ;  but  his  remarkable 
skill  in  the  painting  of  theatrical  scenes  attracted  notice,  and 
he  soon  became  the  most  successful  scene-painter  in  Paris. 
In  getting  up  such  pieces  as  Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful 
Lamp,  he  was  of  the  greatest  assistance  to  a  manager, 
because  he  not  only  painted  the  most  beautiful  scenes,  but 
was  very  ingenious  in  devising  novel  effects  by  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  light.  It  was  he  who  brought  to  perfection  that 
kind  of  scenery  by  which  an  apartment  is  shown  upon  the 
stage  with  an  unbroken  wall  and  ceiling,  instead  of  the 
w  wings  "  commonly  used.  He  was  also  the  inventor  of  sev- 
eral pleasing  effects  in  imitation  of  sunlight,  moonlight,  and 
sunset,  which  are  now  employed  in  every  well-appointed 
theatre. 

From  scene-painting  he  advanced  to  the  painting  of  pano- 
ramas, and  he  assisted  Prevost  in  the  production  of  those 
fine  panoramas  of  Rome,  Naples,  London,  Jerusalem,  and 


INVENTION   OF   THE   DAGUERBOTYPE.  567 

Athens,  which  were  among  the  conspicuous  attractions  of 
Paris  forty  or  fifty  years  ago.  Having  still  fresh  in  his 
mind  the  striking  effects  produced  at  the  theatre  by  modifi- 
cations of  light,  he  now  conceived  an  improvement  on  the 
panorama,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  diorama,  the  object 
of  which  was  to  throw  upon  the  pictures  the  kind  of  light 
suited  to  the  scene  and  time  of  day.  In  1822  the  Diorama 
was  opened.  It  was  a  circular  building,  capable  of  seating 
three  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  and  was  so  arranged  that 
the  spectators  unconsciously  revolved,  and  saw  the  various 
scenes  of  the  panorama,  which  was  itself  stationary.  Arrang- 
ing his  lights  with  consummate  skill,  Daguerre  produced 
illusions  so  perfect  that  the  spectators  could  scarcely  believe 
that  the  scene  before  them  was  not  real.  The  changes  from 
darkness  to  daylight,  and  from  a  clear  to  a  hazy  atmosphere, 
were  admirably  managed. 

"At  one  moment,"  says  a  writer  who  remembers  the 
Diorama  of  1822,  "the  spectator  believed  himself  conveyed 
into  an  immense  cathedral,  of  which  the  arches,  the  columns, 
and  the  large  windows  conveyed  the  idea  of  vast  space  with 
striking  truth.  Now  the  rays  of  the  moon  silvered  an  arid 
soil,  a  desolate  plain,  and  portions  of  fallen  walls,  while  in 
the  dim  distance  rose  to  view  a  castle,  invulnerable  and 
menacing.  Now  some  light  clouds  veiled  the  brightness  of 
the  sky,  and  a  cemetery  came  into  view." 

The  Diorama  was  extremely  popular,  and  gave  Daguerre 
a  considerable  income  for  the  space  of  seventeen  years. 

That  round  edifice  in  the  park  of  New  York,  behind  the 
City  Hall,  was  modelled  after  the  one  erected  by  Daguerre 
in  Paris.  It  was  built  by  Yanderlyn,  an  American  artist, 
who  saw  Daguerre's  diorama,  painted  one  himself,  and 
exhibited  it  in  that  building  about  the  year  1830.  The  edi- 
fice was  afterwards  used  as  the  New  York  post-office,  and 

36 


568  TKIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

is  now  occupied  by  the  Commissioners  of  the  Croton  Aque- 
duct. The  reader  may  say  that  this  has  not  much  to  do 
with  Daguerre ;  but  to  us  in  New  York  it  is  an  interesting 
fact,  that  the  little  round  house  where  we  go  every  May 
to  pay  our  water-tax,  can  trace  its  origin  back  to  the  max 
who  is  identified  with  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  all 
inventions. 

While  Daguerre's  Diorama  in  Paris  was  at  the  height  of 
its  popularity,  and  thus  gave  its  proprietor  the  command  of 
time  and  money,  he  began  the  experiments  which  resulted, 
after  many  years,  in  the  completion  of  the  process  which 
has  added  to  the  English  language  a  new  word,  and  given 
to  mankind  new  sources  of  pleasure. 

He  began  to  experiment  about  the  year  1824 ;  but  when 
he  had  been  working  for  two  years,  he  heard  that  another 
philosopher,  Nice"phore  Niepce  by  name,  was  experimenting 
for  the  same  object,  and  had  actually  succeeded  in  getting 
photographic  pictures.  Daguerre  sought  the  acquaintance 
of  this  man,  which  resulted  in  their  forming  a  partnership 
for  further  investigation.  They  labored  together  for  seven 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  period  Niepce  died,  and  Daguerre 
went  on  alone.  It  appears  that  Niepce  was  the  real  inventor 
of  a  photographic  process  by  which  tolerable  pictures  were 
produced,  but  Daguerre  so  essentially  improved  this  pro- 
cess, that  to  him  has  been  assigned  the  chief  honors  of  the 
discovery. 

After  about  fifteen  years  of  experimenting,  Daguerre  set- 
tled upon  the  following  method  as  the  best :  — 

1.  A  silver-plated  tablet  of  copper  was  highly  polished,  and 
made  perfectly  clean. 

2.  This  tablet  was  exposed  to  the  vapor  of  iodine  until  it  had 
assumed  a  yellow  color. 

3.  It  was  placed  in  the  camera  obscura,  where  it  received  the 


INVENTION    OF   THE    DAGUERROTYPE.  569 

fmage ;     remaining  in   the  camera  a  few  seconds  more  or  less, 
according  as  the  day  was  dull  or  bright. 

4.  It  was  removed  from  the  camera,  and  exposed  to  the  vapor 
of  mercury  heated  to  the  temperature  of  170  degrees.     It  was 
allowed  to  remain  exposed  to  this  vapor  for  three  or  four  minutes, 
or  until  the  picture  was  distinctly  visible. 

5.  The  plate  was  dipped  in  a   preparation   of    soda,  which 
removed  from  it  the  yellow  of  the  iodine. 

6.  The  plate  was  thoroughly  washed  in  clean  water. 

Such  was  the  process  by  which  daguerrotypes  were  pro- 
duced. It  must  be  evident  to  every  one  that  no  man  could 
have  invented  such  a  process  who  was  not  a  good  chemist. 
Now  we  know  that  Niepce  was  well  versed  in  chemistry, 
and  that  Daguerre  knew  little  of  it.  It  is  not  improbable, 
therefore,  that  it  was  Niepce  rather  than  Daguerre  who 
should  have  given  his  name  to  the  pictures  produced.  Still, 
after  the  death  of  Niepce,  his  son  succeeded  him  as 
Daguerre's  partner,  and  this  son  it  was  who  maintained 
that  Daguerre's  improvements  were  so  important  as  to  con- 
stitute him  the  true  inventor.  By  Niepce's  method  it  took 
five  hours  and  a  half  to  produce  a  picture,  but  by  Daguerre's 
improvements  a  picture  was  completed  in  ten  minutes. 
Notwithstanding  this,  however,  Daguerre  admitted  that 
Niepce  had  invented  the  process;  which  he  himself  had 
greatly  improved,  but  only  improved. 

In  1839,  Daguerre's  Diorama  was  burnt  to  the  ground, 
which  deprived  the  inventor  of  his  usual  source  of  income. 
Arago  then  proposed  to  the  French  Government  to  buy 
the  invention,  and  present  it  as  a  free  gift  to  the  whole 
world.  The  government  did  so,  and  conferred  upon 
Daguerre  a  pension  of  six  thousand  francs  a  year,  and 
upon  young  Niepce,  Ms  partner,  a  pension  of  four  thou- 
sand francs  a  year. 


570  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

I  notice  a  remarkable  statement  in  the  excellent  aiid 
trustworthy  American  Encyclopedia  of  Messrs.  Ripley  and 
Dana.  It  is,  that  daguerrotype  portraits  were  first  taken 
in  the  city  of  New  York.  The  French  inventors  employed 
the  process  only  in  taking  views  of  inanimate  objects.  Dr. 
Draper,  says  the  writer  in  the  Encyclopedia,  Professor  of 
Chemistry  in  the  University  of  New  York,  was  the  first 
to  perceive  the  applicability  of  Dagtierre's  method  to  the 
taking  of  portraits.  He  immediately  submitted  his  thought 
to  the  test  of  experiment,  and  succeeded  in  producing  por- 
traits so  excellent  that  they  have  not  yet  been  surpassed. 
The  reader  is  well  aware  that  daguerrotype  portraits  came 
rapidly  into  favor,  and  had  immense  currency ;  though  they 
have  since  been  superseded  by  photographs,  and  many  other 
varieties  of  sun-painted  pictures. 

Daguerre  died  in  1851,  aged  sixty-two,  after  having  spent 
twenty-six  years  in  perfecting  and  developing  the  invention 
with  which  his  name  is  identified.     He  wrote  a  work  upon 
the  daguerrotype  and  the  diorama,  which  has  been  transla 
ted  into  English. 


JOHN  MACADAM. 


FEW  persons  are  aware  who  ride  over  the  excellent  macad- 
amized roads  of  the  Central  Park,  that  Mr.  Macadam,  the 
inventor  of  the  roads  which  bear  his  name,  was  once  a  resi- 
dent of  New  York,  and  probably  often  walked  or  rode  over 
the  fields  and  farms  which  then  occupied  the  site  of  the  park. 
Yet  such  was  the  fact.  Though  born  and  buried  in  Scotland, 
he  lived  for  some  years  in  New  York;  and,  possibly,  the 
horrid  condition  of  American  roads  before  the  Revolutionary 
war,  may  have  first  impressed  upon  his  mind  the  urgent 
necessity  there  was  for  a  better  road  system. 

John  London  Macadam  was  born  in  1756,  in  Ayr  County, 
Scotland,  not  far  from  the  birthplace  of  Robert  Burns.  His 
family  was  ancient  and  highly  respectable.  When  he  was 
little  more  than  an  infant,  one  of  his  uncles,  William 
Macadam,  accompanied  the  British  forces  which  came  to 
America  under  Lord  Loudoun,  during  the  old  French  war, 
for  the  conquest  of  Canada.  This  William  Macadam,  it 
appears,  had  something  to  do  with  supplying  the  British 
army  with  provisions ;  and  when  the  war  was  over,  instead 
of  returning  to  Europe,  he  settled  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
where  he  became  a  thriving  merchant.  When  John  Macadam 
was  fourteen  years  of  age,  his  father  died,  and  the  boy  was 
sent  to  America  to  become  a  member  of  the  family  of  his 
uncle  William,  who  procured  him  a  place  in  the  counting. 
Louse  of  a  friend. 


572  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPEISE. 

f 

This  was  in  1770,  when  New  York  was  a  quaint  old  place, 
half  English,  half  Dutch,  situated  at  the  end  of  Manhattan 
Island, — the  residue  of  which  was  verdant  with  woods  and 
farms,  and  adorned  with  the  villas  and  mansions  of  the 
wealthier  citizens.  People  who  are  only  acquainted  with 
Manhattan  Island  now,  when  its  beautiful  groves  are  gone, 
its  commanding  bluffs  dug  away,  its  surface  excavated  and 
excoriated  for  railroads  and  streets,  can  form  no  idea  of  its 
loveliness  a  hundred  year**  ago,  when  John  Macadam  was  a 
junior  clerk. 

Five  years  after  his  arrival  here,  the  Revolutionary  war 
broke  out,  and  he  was  compelled  to  side  for  the  king  or  the 
colonies.  Being  but  nineteen  years  of  age  at  the  time,  and 
of  Scottish  birth  (there  is  a  great  deal  of  Tory  blood  in 
Scottish  veins),  he  espoused  the  cause  of  George  the  Third, 
along  with  his  uncle  William,  and  a  majority  of  the 
wealthier  merchants  of  the  city.  In  1776,  when  he  was 
still  but  twenty  years  old,  General  "Washington  was  com- 
pelled to  abandon  New  York,  which,  for  the  next  seven 
years,  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  British.  After  a  time, 
this  young  man  received  the  valuable  appointment  of  prize- 
agent  for  the  port  of  New  York,  which  gave  him  a  percent- 
age upon  the  prizes  brought  in  by  British  privateers  and 
men-of-war.  His  percentage  was  probably  pretty  liberal, 
for  he  is  reported  to  have  gained  a  considerable  fortune  from 
his  office. 

Far  indeed  was  it  from  the  thoughts  of  the  New  York 
loyalists  that  the  time  would  ever  come  when  it  would  be 
beyond  the  power  of  their  king  to  protect  his  faithful  subjects 
in  Manhattan.  And  yet  that  time  came.  In  1783,  John 
Macadam,  then  twenty-seven  years  of  age,  with  all  the  other 
Tories  of  note,  was  obliged  to  leave  New  York,  and  abandon 
so  much  of  their  property  as  they  could  not  carry  off. 


JOHN   MACADAM.  573 

On  reaching  his  native  Scotland,  however,  Macadam  was 
rich  enough  to  buy  an  estate  in  the  county  of  Ayr,  and  that 
estate  was  large  enough  to  make  him  an  important  man  in 
the  county.  We  find  him  soon  a  county  magistrate,  a  trus- 
tee of  the  public  roads,  and  Deputy  Lord  Lieutenant, — 
offices  which  are  never  bestowed  in  Great  Britain  except 
upon  persons  of  wealth  and  social  importance.  It  was  while 
he  held  the  office  of  Ayrshire  road-trustee  that  he  began 
seriously  to  study  the  subject  of  road-making.  At  that 
time  roads  were  universally  bad,  except  where  Nature  her- 
self had  made  them  good. 

"A  broad-wheeled  wagon,"  wrote  Adam  Smith,  in  1774, 
"attended  by  two  men,  and  drawn  by  eight  horses,  in  about 
six  weeks'  time,  carries  and  brings  back,  between  London 
and  Edinburgh  (404  miles),  near  four  ton  weight  of 
goods." 

Dr.  Franklin,  writing  in  1751,  speaks  of  travelling  seventy 
miles  a  day  in  England,  by  a  post-chaise,  as  a  most  extraor- 
dinary achievement,  killing  to  man  and  beast.  Much  of 
the  soil  of  England  and  Scotland  is  a  deep,  rich  clay,  which 
makes  the  best  farms  and  the  worst  roads  in  the  universe ; 
and  yet  it  is  particularly  well  adapted  to  the  system  of 
Macadam. 

What  it  was  which  suggested  to  him  the  simple  expedient 
of  covering  the  soft,  miry  roads  with  broken  stones,  averag- 
ing six  ounces  each  in  weight,  has  not  been  recorded.  We 
only  know,  that,  during  the  long  wars  between  England  and 
France,  he  held  important  appointments  under  the  Crown, 
which  made  it  his  duty  to  superintend  the  transportation  of 
supplies.  He  then  renewed  the  study  of  roads,  and  pursued 
it  with  all  the  unflagging  perseverance  of  a  thorough  Scotch- 
man. At  his  own  expense,  he  travelled  thirty  thousand 
miles  for  the  observation  of  roads,  which  occupied  him  more 


574  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

than  five  years,  and  cost  him  more  than  five  thousand  pounds 
sterling.  I  presume  his  idea  was  entirely  original ;  for  we 
cannot  find  any  trace  of  a  macadamized  road  previous  to  his 
day.  The  only  notion  which  existed,  previous  to  his  time, 
of  making  a  permanent  road,  was  to  pave  the  whole  surface 
with  pebbles,  blocks,  or  slabs  of  stone;  either  of  which  was 
far  too  expensive  to  become  general. 

It  was  not  until  1811,  when  he  was  fifty-five  years  of  age, 
that  Macadam  made  his  celebrated  report  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  in  which  he  described  the  condition  of  the  roads 
of  Great  Britain,  and  gave  an  outline  of  his  system  for 
repairing  them.  In  1815  a  district  was  assigned  him  for  an 
experiment.  Need  I  say  that  he  met  with  nothing  but  oppo- 
sition, not  only  from  every  one  connected  with  the  old  road 
system,  but  even  from  the  farmers  through  whose  lands  the 
first  macadamized  road  was  to  be  made  !  Such  was  the  pre- 
judice against  his  plan  that  he  could  not  get  the  old  road- 
makers  to  execute  his  orders,  and  he  was  obliged  to  get  his 
three  sons  to  come  and  assist  him  in  superintending  the 
details. 

But  the  tide  soon  turned.  A  good  macadamized  road  is 
an  irresistible  argument;  and  there  soon  arose  a  rage  for 
making  such  roads,  as  furious  as  the  former  prejudice  against 
them.  Four  years  after  he  began  operations,  there  were 
seven  hundred  miles  of  macadamized  road  in  Great  Britain ; 
and  before  the  death  of  the  inventor,  out  of  the  twenty-five 
thousand  six  hundred  miles  of  high  roads  in  England,  there 
were  not  more,  it  is  said,  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
not  macadamized. 

John  Macadam  was  a  strangely  disinterested  man.  He 
not  only  refused  to  receive  any  reward  for  his  services, 
including  an  offered  knighthood,  but  he  would  not  take  a 
contract  to  make  or  repair  a  road,  and  he  declined  some 


,  JOHN  MACADAM.  575 

pressing  and  liberal  offers  to  take  charge  of  the  roads  in 
foreign  countries. 

He  was  twice  married  •  first,  during  his  residence  in  New 
Fork,  to  a  Long  Island  lady ;  and  again,  in  his  seventy-first 
year,  to  another  American  lady,  Miss  De  Laucey,  of  New 
York,  a  member  of  the  family  which  has  given  its  name  to 
one  of  our  streets  He  died  in  1836,  aged  eighty  years. 

I  have  spoken  above  of  the  excellent  roads  in  the  Central 
Park  of  New  York,  as  macadamized.  I  should,  perhaps, 
have  styled  them  Telfordized,  for  it  was  Thomas  Telford,  a 
famous  English  engineer,  contemporary  with  Macadam,  who 
invented  the  particular  plan  upon  which  those  roads  are 
built.  Macadam  laid  his  broken  stones  upon  the  naked 
soil, — but  it  was  Thomas  Telford  who  improved  upon 
Macadam's  idea,  by  laying  large,  rough,  flat  stones  upon  the 
soil,  placing  upon  them  the  broken  stones  of  Macadam,  and 
covering  the  surface  with  fragments  of  the  size  of  a  boy's 
marble. 


WILLIAM  GED,  THE  FIRST  STEREOTYPER. 


FEW  readers,  I  presume,  have  ever  seen  or  heard  the 
name  placed  at  the  head  of  this  article.  Nevertheless,  it 
was  the  name  of  a  man  who  conferred  a  favor  upon  them  all ; 
since  he  invented  the  art  without  which  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  sell  a  copy  of  a  volume  at  its  present  price.  Wil- 
liam Ged  was  the  inventor  of  Stereotyping. 

He  was  a  Scotchman,  born  about  the  year  1690.  For 
some  years  he  was  a  thriving  goldsmith  at  Edinburgh,  and 
was  considerably  noted  in  the  trade  for  his  ingenuity.  He 
invented  some  tools  and  processes  which  facilitated  the  exer- 
cise of  his  craft,  and  these  he  freely  made  known  to  persons 
of  the  same  vocation.  It  appears  that  his  attention  was 
called  to  the  art  of  printing  by  his  being  employed  in  pay- 
ing off  the  hands  of  an  Edinburgh  printing-house,  which  led 
him  to  reflect  upon  the  vast  amount  of  labor  absorbed  in  the 
production  of  a  book.  In  those  days,  a  goldsmith  performed 
some  of  the  functions  of  a  banker,  and  kept  other  people's 
gold  in  his  strong  box  as  well  as  his  own.  It  was  probably 
in  his  capacity  as  ajbanker  that  he  furnished  the  money  for 
the  payment  of  the  Scottish  printers. 

It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that  as  late  as  the  year  1725, 
no  types  were  cast  in  Scotland,  although  the  business  of 
printing  had  then  attained  considerable  proportions  in  that 
country.  It  seems,  too,  that  the  English  printers  then  im- 
ported some  of  their  best  type  from  the  Continent.  Young 


578  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

Benjamin  Franklin,  in  that  very  year,  worked  as  a  journey- 
man printer  in  London,  and  he  tells  us  that  his  master 
employed  fifty  men ;  but  notwithstanding  this  large  demand 
for  types,  the  English  printers  imported  some  kinds  from 
Holland,  a  country  which  appears  to  have  had  in  ancient 
times  almost  a  monopoly  of  the  business  of  type-founding. 

One  day  in  1725,  William  Ged  fell  into  conversation  with 
a  printer,  who  spoke  of  the  loss  it  was  to  Scotland  not  to 
have  a  type-founder  nearer  than  London.  The  printer 
showed  the  ingenious  goldsmith  some  single  types,  and  also 
composed  pages  standing  ready  for  the  press,  and  asked 
him  if  there  was  anything  so  difficult  in  the  manufacture  of 
type  that  he  could  not  invent  a  way  of  doing  it. 

w  I  judge  it  more  practicable,"  replied  the  goldsmith,  "  for 
me  to  make  plates  from  the  composed  pages  than  to  make 
single  types." 

"  If,"  said  the  printer,  "  such  a  thing  could  be  done,  an 
estate  might  be  made  by  it." 

William  Ged  requested  the  printer  to  lend  him  a  page  of 
composed  type  for  an  experiment,  which  he  took  home  with 
him,  and  proceeded  to  consider.  After  several  days  of  exper- 
imenting, he  appears  to  have  hit  upon  the  right  idea.  That 
is  to  say,  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  composed  page 
must  be  cast;  but  the  question  remained,  what  was  the 
proper  material  in  which  to  cast  it ;  and  it  was  not  until  two 
years  had  elapsed  that  he  discovered  the  secret.  He  appears 
to  have  tried  the  harder  and  more  expensive  metals  before 
attempting  it  in  a  metal,  or  compound  of  metals,  similar  to 
that  of  the  type  itself.  At  the  end  of  two  years,  he  had 
such  success  that  no  one  could  distinguish  an  impression  taken 
from  one  of  his  cast  plates  from  ordinary  print. 

From  this  time  he  had  the  usual  experience  of  an  inventor. 
Although  not  destitute  of  capital,  he  offered  a  fourth  inter- 


WILLIAM   GED,    THE   FIRST   STEREOTYPES.  579 

est  in  his  invention  to  an  Edinburgh  printer,  on  condition  of 
his  advancing  all  the  money  requisite  for  establishing  a  ste- 
reotype foundry.  But  this  printer,  upon  conversing  with 
others  of  the  craft,  became  so  alarmed  at  the  expensiveness 
of  the  undertaking,  that  he  failed  to  perform  his  part  of  the 
contract.  The  partnership  lasted  two  years,  during  which 
the  cautious  Scotch  printer  advanced  but  twenty-two  pounds  ; 
and  the  impatient  Ged  looked  eagerly  about  him  for  a  more 
enterprising  partner.  Thus  four  years  passed  away  after  he 
had  begun  to  experiment. 

A  London  stationer,  William  Fenner  by  name,  being  by 
accident  at  Edinburgh,  heard  of  the  invention,  and  made  an 
offer  for  a  share  in  its  profits.  He  agreed  to  advance  all  the 
money  requisite ;  and,  four  months  after  date,  to  have  a 
house  and  materials  ready  in  London  suitable  for  Ged's  pur- 
pose. The  inventor  thought  it  a -hard  bargain  to  relinquish 
one  half  the  profits  of  so  valuable  and  costly  a  conception ; 
but  he  gladly  accepted  it,  and  proceeded  to  arrange  his  busi- 
ness for  a  removal  to  the  metropolis. 

Arriving  in  London  at  the  time  appointed,  he  was  sorely 
disappointed  to  find  that  neither  house  nor  material  was 
ready  for  him.  His  delinquent  partner,  who  was  a  plausible 
fellow,  contrived  to  satisfy  him  with  his  excuses,  and  even 
induced  him  to  admit  into  the  firm  a  type-founder  on  condi- 
tion of  his  supplying  them  with  the  requisite  amount  of 
type.  This  type-founder,  however,  furnished  them  only 
with  refuse  type,  wholly  unsuited  to  the  purpose,  which 
Ged  rejected,  to  the  great  disgust  of  both  his  partners.  Not 
discouraged,  he  next  applied  to  the  king's  printers  to  know 
if  they  would  take  from  him  stereotyped  plates  of  a  certain 
excellent  type  which  they  had  recently  introduced.  A  day 
was  appointed  for  Ged  to  lav  before  them  in  detail  his  plans 
and  proposals. 


580  TKIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

Before  the  day  named  for  the  interview,  the  king's  print- 
ers very  naturally  consulted  upon  the  subject  the  very  type- 
founder who  had  furnished  them  with  the  admirable  type 
which  had  attracted  Ged's  attention.  The  type-founder  as 
naturally  pooh-poohed  the  new  system ;  indeed,  laughed  it 
to  scorn,  and  said  he  would  give  the  inventor  fifty  guineas 
if  in  six  months  he  would  make  one  page  of  the  Bible  by 
the  new  method,  which  would  produce  as  good  an  impres- 
sion as  could  be  obtained  from  good  type.  The  interview, 
however,  occurred,  and  probably  Ged  would  have  convinced 
the  king's  printers  of  the  feasibility  of  his  plans,  but  for  the 
adverse  opinion  of  an  interested  man.  The  printers  told 
the  inventor  of  the  offer  of  fifty  guineas,  and  said  that  the 
gentleman  who  had  made  it  was  then  in  the  house. 

"Being  called  into  our  company,"  Mr.  Ged  relates,  in  a 
narrative  dictated  on  his  death-bed,  after  a  long  life  of  disap- 
pointment, w  he  bragged  much  of  his  great  skill  and  knowl- 
edge in  all  the  parts  of  mechanism,  and  particularly  vaunted 
that  he  and  hundreds  besides  himself  could  make  plates  to  as 
great  perfection  as  I  could ;  which  occasioned  some  heat  in 
our  conversation." 

The  dispute  was  settled  at  last  by  a  kind  of  wager.  The 
type-founder  and  Ged  were  each  of  them  to  be  furnished 
with  a  page  of  the  Bible  in  type,  and  bring  back  within  eight 
days  a  stereotyped  plate  of  the  same ;  and  he  who  failed 
was  to  treat  the  whole  company.  An  umpire  was  appointed, 
— the  foreman  of  the  king's  printing-house, —  and  the  parties 
separated.  The  result  may  best  be  given  in  Ged's  own 
quaint  language :  — 

"  Next  day,  about  dinner  time,  each  of  us  had  a  page  sent  us. 
I  immediately  after  fell  to  work,  and  by  five  o'  th'  clock  that  same 
afternoon,  I  had  finished  three  plates  from  that  page,  and  caused 
to  take  impressions  from  them  on  paper,  which  I  and  partners 


WILLIAM   GED,    THE   FIRST   STEREOTYPES.  581 

carried  directly  to  the  king's  printing-  house,  and  showed  them  to 
said  Mr.  Gibb,  the  foreman,  who  would  not  believe  but  these 
impressions  were  taken  from  the  type ;  whereupon,  I  produced 
one  of  the  plates,  which,  he  said,  was  the  types  soldered  together, 
and  sawed  through.  To  convince  him  of  his  mistake,  I  took  that 
plate  from  him,  and  broke  it  before  his  face,  then  showed  him 
another,  which  made  him  cry  out.  He  was  surprised  at  my  per- 
formance, and  then  called  us  to  a  bottle  of  wine ;  when  he  pur- 
posed I  should  take  eleven  pages  more,  to  make  up  a  form,  that 
he  might  see  how  it  answered  the  sheet-way." 

Poor  Ged  had  been  only  too  successful ;  for  the  printers 
fancied  they  saw  in  this  new  invention  the  destruction  of 
their  business;  and  from  this  time  there  appears  to  have 
been  a  tacit  understanding  .among  them  that  Ged  and  his 
scheme  were  to  be  frustrated.  At  the  expiration  of  the 
eight  days,  the  type-founder  failed  to  keep  his  appointment, 
but  had  the  honesty  to  send  word  that  he  could  not  perform 
the  thing  himself,  neither  "  could  he  get  one  of  the  hundreds 
he  had  spoken  of  to  undertake  it." 

The  news  of  Ged's  invention  circulated  in  London,  and 
specimens  of  his  plates  were  handed  about,  till  one  of  them 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Earl  of  Macclesfield.  This  noble- 
man caused  the  partners  to  be  informed  that  the  office  of 
printer  to  the  University  of  Cambridge  was  vacant,  and  that 
the  heads  of  the  University  would  be  glad  to  receive  them,  and 
award  them  the  privilege  of  printing  Bibles  and  Prayer  Books 
by  the  new  process.  This  was  joyful  intelligence  ;  but  the 
too  easy  and  credulous  Ged  was  not  the  man  to  profit  by  it. 
Indeed,  the  opposition  of  the  London  printers  was  so  gen- 
eral and  so  violent,  that  a  stronger  man  than  he  might  have 
struggled  against  it  in  vain.  He  now  discovered  that  his 
partner,  Tenner,  was  not  possessed  of  capital,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  admit  a  fourth  partner,  who  afterwards  boasted 


582  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPKISE. 

that  he  had  joined  the  company  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
destroying  it. 

"  As  long  as  I  am  their  letter-founder,"  said  he  to  a  lead- 
ing printer,  "  they  shall  never  hurt  the  trade,  and  it  was  for 
that  reason  I  joined  them." 

The  contract,  however,  was  obtained  from  the  University, 
and  Ged  went  to  Cambridge  to  superintend  the  work.  But 
he  was  utterly  unable  to  contend  against  the  opposition  of 
the  printers ;  and  the  less,  because  he  had  not  been  bred  a 
printer  himself.  His  partners  deceived  and  cheated  him ; 
his  colleague,  the  type-founder,  sent  him  damaged  and 
imperfect  type.  He  sent  to  Holland  for  a  supply.  After 
two  months  they  arrived,  but  they  proved  to  be  so  incom- 
plete that  an  impression  taken  from  them  was  little  more 
than  a  page  of  blots. 

After  struggling  with  difficulties  of  this  nature  for  four  or 
five  years,  without  being  able  to  complete  the  stereotyped 
plates  for  one  Bible  or  Prayer  Book,  his  patience  was 
exhausted,  and  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  a  ruined  man. 
The  true  cause  of  his  failure  was  his  extreme  credulity, 
which  was  such  as  to  disqualify  him  from  successfully  dealing 
with  men.  At  Edinburgh  his  friends,  anxious  that  so  valu- 
able an  invention  should  not  be  lost,  made  a  subscription  to 
defray  the  expense  of  stereotyping  one  volume,  and  Ged 
apprenticed  his  son  to  a  printer  in  order  that  he  might  not  be 
dependent  for  the  necessary  assistance  upon  a  hostile  body. 
By  the  aid  of  his  son,  he  completed  plates  for  a  Latin 
Sallust,  which  was  printed  at  Edinburgh  in  the  year  1736, 
and  copies  of  it  are  still  preserved  in  Scotland  as  curiosities. 
As  he  was  unable  to  procure  the  best  type,  this  Sallust  is  not 
a  very  fine  specimen  of  stereotyping ;  but  it  is  a  convincing 
proof  that  William  Ged  had  mastered  the  chief  difficulties  of 
the  art,  and  that  in  more  favorable  circumstances  he  could 


WILLIAM  GED,    THE   FIRST  STEREOTYPES.  583 

have  executed  work  which  even  at  the  present  day  would  be 
considered  creditable. 

The  invention  was  never  a  source  of  profit  to  the  inventor. 
By  the  time  his  son  was  a  sufficiently  good  compositor  to 
render  him  valuable  aid,  and  just  as  they  were  about  to 
embark  in  business  together,  he  was  taken  sick.  He  died 
in  1749. 

It  is  a  proof  of  the  simplicity  of  his  character  and  of  his 
faith  in  the  value  of  his  invention,  that,  though  he  had  offers 
from  Holland  either  to  go  thither  or  sell  his  invention  to 
Holland  printers,  he  always  refused. 

"  I  want,"  said  he,  "  to  serve  my  own  country,  and  not  to 
hurt  it,  as  I  must  have  done  by  enabling  them  to  undersell 
by  that  advantage." 

After  Ged's  death  the  secret  slumbered  till  about  the  year 
1795,  when  it  was  revived  or  rediscovered  in  Paris,  and  soon 
after  brought  to  considerable  perfection  in  England.  At 
present  the  art  of  stereotyping  has  been  brought  to  the  point, 
that  our  daily  newspapers,  such  as  the  "Tunes,"  "Herald," 
and  "Tribune, "containing  eight  large  pages,  are  stereotyped 
every  night  in  from  twenty-five  to  thirty  minutes,  and  as  many 
copies  of  the  plates  can  be  produced  as  may  be  desired. 

37 


A    FRENCH   TORT. 

PIERRE    ANTOINE    BERRYER. 

IT  is  curious  to  notice  how  limited  are  reputations.  I  sup- 
pose that  for  every  individual  in  the  world  who  has  heard  of 
Queen  Victoria,  there  are  ten  who  do  not  know  that  such  a 
person  exists ;  and  I  am  sure  that  there  are  thousands  in  the 
United  States  who  never  heard  of  General  Grant.  Many 
reputations  are  limited  by  the  sect,  profession,  or  party  to 
which  the  individual  belongs.  A  man's  name  may  be  as 
familiar  as  a  household  word  to  all  the  Baptists  in  the  world, 
and  yet  the  majority  of  Presbyterians  may  know  nothing  of 
him ;  or  a  man  may  have  in  his  own  country  an  immense  and 
dazzling  reputation,  and  be  unknown  to  all  the  world 
besides. 

A  case  in  point  is  that  of  the  great  French  lawyer, 
Berry er,  who  died  recently  in  Paris.  Americans  in  general 
know  about  as  much  of  Berryer  as  French  people  in  general 
know  of  our  famous  lawyer,  James  T.  Brady,  whose  death 
occurred  in  New  York  a  short  time  ago.  But  M.  Berryer 
was  so  interesting  a  person  that  I  am  tempted  to  give  a  little 
account  of  him. 

Pierre  Antoine  Berryer,  born  at  Paris  in  1790,  was 
the  son  of  a  lawyer,  and  was  descended  from  a  family 
that  had  come  originally  from  Germany,  but  had  long  been 
settled  in  France.  He  seems  to  have  been  composed  almost 
entirely  of  the  stuff  of  which  romances  are  made.  It  is 
wonderful  that  such  a  man  should  ever  have  been  able  to 


586  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTEKPKISE. 

adopt  the  profession  of  the  law.  His  father,  who  was  a 
warm  adherent  of  the  Bourbon  dynasty,  placed  him  at  a 
college  near  Paris,  which  was  conducted  by  priests,  and 
there  he  showed  a  strong  inclination  to  enter  the  church. 
He  yielded,  however,  to  his  father's  wishes,  and  prepared 
for  the  legal  profession. 

He  completed  his  studies,  and  was  about  to  begin  the 
practice  of  law,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  when  he  fell  in 
love  with  an  attractive  young  lady,  aged  sixteen,  whom  he 
immediately  married.  This  was  in  1811,  when  Napoleon 
was  at  the  zenith  of  his  power. 

After  his  marriage,  he  threw  himself  ardently  into  his  pro- 
fession, and  endeavored  also  to  attract  attention  by  public 
addresses,  for  which  he  had  a  particular  talent.  Inheriting 
his  father's  political  opinions,  he  was  never  reconciled  to  the 
sway  of  Napoleon;  and  when,  in  1814,  the  allies  entered 
France,  and  Napoleon  was  obliged  to  surrender,  young 
Berryer  announced  his  downfall  to  a  company  of  magistrates 
and  law  students.  The  intelligence  not  being  believed,  an 
order  was  issued  for  his  arrest ;  but  he  was  forewarned,  and 
made  his  escape.  After  Napoleon's  return  from  Elba,  he 
joined  the  volunteers  who  turned  out  to  defend  the  ancient 
dynasty ;  but  resumed  his  profession  after  Waterloo  and  the 
second  return  of  Louis  the  Eighteenth. 

As  yet,  he  had  won  no  great  distinction  at  the  bar.  In 
1815,  being  then  but  twenty-five  years  of  age,  he  was  one  of 
the  three  lawyers  engaged  to  defend  Marshal  NeyT  who  was 
tried  for  rejoining  the  Emperor,  after  the  escape  from  Elba. 
It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  talents  of  young  Berryer, 
both  as  a  lawyer  and  an  orator,  were  revealed  to  his 
countrymen.  It  was  a  cause  which  gave  immense  oppor- 
tunities for  a  display  of  knowledge,  skill,  and  eloquence ; 
and  the  young  advocate  is  said  to  have  improved  those  oppoiv 


A  FRENCH  TOBY.  587 

trinities  to  the  utmost,  and  his  closing  speech  is,  to  this  day, 
regarded  as  a  modeLof  its  kind.  He  could  not  save  Marshal 
Ney,  but  he  made  himself  the  first  of  the  young  lawyers  of 
his  country.  He  was  employed  to  defend  other  generals 
of  Napoleon,  and  acquitted  himself  to  admiration. 

It  is,  however,  as  a  politician  that  he  is  interesting  to  us. 
I  consider  him  in  the  light  of  a  curiosity.  With  talents  sur- 
passed by  few  men  of  his  time,  with  great  and  exact  knowl- 
edge, and  a  patriotism  which  no  one  that  knew  him  could 
doubt,  he  was  .nevertheless,  from  youth  to  hoary  age,  a  zeal- 
ous, consistent,  uncompromising  adherent  of  the  old  Bourbon 
dynasty,  now  represented  by  the  person  known  in  Europe 
generally  as  the  Count  de  Chambord,  but  who  is  styled, 
by  the  legitimists  of  France,  Henry  the  Fifth.  There  is 
something  strange  in  this.  It  is  incomprehensible  to  us 
how  a  man  so  able,  so  pure,  and  in  many  respects  so 
wise  as  Berry er,  could  honestly  think  that  this  poor, 
foolish  Count  de  Chambord  had  a  divine  right  to  reign 
over  France,  and  that  France  could  never  be  tranquil  or 
happy  until  she  dutifully  accepted  him  as  her  king.  So  it 
was,  however,  and  he  was  true  to  his  belief  to  the  last  hour 
of  his  life. 

He  was  too  sensible  a  man  not  to  know  that  the  time  had 
not  come  for  the  return  of  the  Bourbons-  In  1832,  when 
the  Duchess  de  Berri  attempted  to  raise  an  insurrection 
against  the  government  of  Louis  Philippe,  he  went  to  La 
Vendee,  where  the  Duchess  was,  and  begged  her  to  abandon 
an  attempt  which  he  saw  could  end  in  nothing  but  defeat. 
Notwithstanding  he  had  given  her  this  excellent  advice 
(which  of  course  she,  being  a  Bourbon,  disregarded),  he  was 
arrested  on  a  charge  of  promoting  the  insurrection.  He  was 
tried  and  triumphantly  acquitted.  Soon  after  this,  his  friend 
Viscount  de  Chateaubriand,  another  legitimist,  in  a  pamphlet 


588  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

upon  the  imprisonment  of  the  Duchess  de  Bern,  apostro- 
phized her  thus :  — 

"  Your  son  is  our  King." 

The  Viscount  was  prosecuted  by  the  government,  together 
with  half  a  dozen  editors  who  had  published  an  address  of 
de  Chateaubriand's,  of  a  similar  tenor.  Who  could  defend 
these  prisoners  but  Berry er  ?  His  conduct  of  the  case  was 
in  the  highest  degree  effective,  and  all  the  prisoners  were 
acquitted. 

During  the  whole  of  the  reign  of  Louis  Philippe,  he  was 
sure  to  be  employed  whenever  a  legitimist  of  rank  was  cited 
before  the  tribunals.  In  1836,  the  legitimist  party  in  France 
subscribed  to  purchase  an  estate  for  the  great  advocate  who 
had  delivered  so  many  of  them  from  trouble.  In  the  saine 
year,  when  it  was  announced  that  the  exiled  King,  Charles 
the  Tenth,  was  near  his  end,  Berryer  visited  him  in  his 
retreat  near  Trieste,  and  paid  a  last  homage  to  the  man  whom 
he  revered  as  his  rightful  sovereign. 

It  was  Berryer  who,  in  1840,  defended  Louis  Napoleon 
after  he  had  made  his  ridiculous  attempt  to  corrupt  the 
garrison  of  Boulogne.  But  it  was  with*  great  difficulty  that 
he  was  induced  to  undertake  the  cause,  and  he  did  so  at 
length,  because,  as  he  said  Louis  Napoleon  was  certainly 
the  heir  of  the  Napoleon  dynasty  and  ought  not  to  be  con- 
demned to  death  for  asserting  what  he  considered  to  be  his 
rights. 

"All  that  I  can  do,"  said  the  great  advocate,  "is  to  save 
his  life ;  perpetual  imprisonment  must  at  all  events  be  his 
fate." 

An  interesting  anecdote  is  related  of  this  trial.  Louis 
Napoleon,  it  was  agreed,  should  deliver  a  short  address  to 
the  Court,  and  then  refuse  to  answer  any  questions.  He 


A  FRENCH   TOKY.  589 

prepared  a  draught  of  such  an  address  as  he  wished  to  deliver, 
aud  handed  it  to  his  lawyer  for  emendation.  M.  Berry er, 
thinking  the  address  was  much  too  inflated,  read  it  over  to 
an  English  friend  to  get  his  suggestions  upon  it. 

"You  English,"  said  M.  Berryer,  "who  have  so  much 
common-sense,  can  suggest  what  is  ultra  and  exaggerated-" 

The  reading  began.  Various  alterations  were  made  in  the 
opening  sentences.  At  length  M.  Berryer  came  to  the 
following :  —  ^ 

"  I  represent  before  you  a  principle  and  a  cause  —  the  first,  the 
Sovereignty  of  the  People,  and  the  second,  that  of  the  Empire." 

Upon  hearing  these  words  the  Englishman  laughed. 

"  What  are  you  laughing  at?  "  asked  the  lawyer. 

"Well,"  replied  the  Englishman,  "I  think  there  is  one 
other  thing  the  Prince  represents." 

"What  is  that?" 

"  A  defeat,"  was  the  reply. 

'•<  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

w  Waterloo,"  answered  the  Englishman. 

w  It  is  the  word !  the  very  word  !  "  cried  M.  Berryer,  and 
he  instantly  altered  the  passage  so  that  it  read  thus  : 

"  I  represent  before  you  a  principle,  a  cause,  and  a  defeat.  The 
principle  is  the  Sovereignty  of  the  People ;  the  cause  is  that  of  the 
Empire ;  the  defeat  is  that  of  Waterloo.  The  principle,  you  have 
recognized  it;  the  cause,  you  have  served  it;  the  defeat,  you 
would  avenge  it." 

This  piece  of  clap-trap  was  accordingly  delivered  by  the 
prisoner.  Years  after,  when  Louis  Napoleon,  as  Emperor 
of  France,  was  seeking  the  alliance  of  Great  Britain,  some 
prying  journalist  fished  out  this  forgotten  passage  from  the 
dead  sea  of  journalism,  and  spread  it  before  Europe.  The 


590  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

English  Press  poured  torrents  of  invective  upon  the  person 
supposed  to  be  the  author  of  it ;  and  it  was  only  a  few  months 
ago,  since  M.  Berryer's  death,  that  the  Englishman  who 
figures  in  the  story  communicated  the  facts  to  one  of  the 
London  papers. 

During  the  last  twenty  years,  M.  Berryer's  name  appears 
in  the  report  of  almost  every  important  trial  that  has 
occurred  in  Paris,  and  he  has  usually  been  a  member  of 
whatever  semblance  of  a  legislature  France  may  have  had. 
Always  faithful  to  the  ancient  Royal  Family,  he  protested, 
in  1851,  against  repealing  the  law  which  forbade  the  Bour- 
bons from  entering  France.  "The  Count  de  Chambord," 
said  he,  w  is  not  a  Frenchman  in  exile ;  he  is  a  King  of 
France  unlawfully  excluded  from  the  throne,  and  no  mon- 
arch can  accept  permission  to  enter  his  own  dominions." 

On  his  death-bed,  in  November,  1869,  a  few  hours  before 
he  expired,  after  he  had  received  the  last  sacraments  of  the 
church,  M.  Berry er  wrote  the  following  letter  to  the  Count 
de  Chambord :  — 

"Oh,  Monseigneur  —  oh,  my  King!  they  tell  me  that  my  last 
hour  is  at  hand.  Alas  !  that  I  should  die  without  having  seen  the 
triumph  of  your  hereditary  rights,  consecrating  the  establishment 
and  the  development  of  those  liberties  of  which  our  country  stands 
in  need. 

"  I  bear  these  vows  to  Heaven  for  your  Majesty,  for  her  Majesty 
the  Queen,  for  our  dear  France.  That  they  may  be  less  unworthy 
to  be  heard  by  God,  I  leave  this  life  armed  with  all  the  succors  of 
our  holy  religion. 

"  Adieu,  Sire  ;  may  God  protect  you  and  save  France. 

"Your devoted  and  faithful  subject.  BERRYEB. 

"18th  November,  1868." 

He  died  soon  after  these  words  were  written.  His  remains 
were  followed  to  the  grave  by  a  great  concourse  of  his  legal 


A  FRENCH   TOEY.  591 

brethren  and    others,   among  whom  were   several   distin- 
guished members  of  the  English  bar. 

A  writer  in  the  "London  Times,"  who  has  frequently 
heard  Berry er  speak,  gives  a  glowing  description  of  his 
eloquence. 

"His  speeches,"  says  this  writer,  "  had  in  them  at  once  all 
the  charm  of  finished  orations  and  the  force  of  the  sudden- 
ness, vivacity,  and  fire  of  extempore  harangues.  .  . 
When  he  stood  at  the  tribune,  with  his  head  raised  and  his 
arm  uplifted,  and  poured  forth  his  torrent  of  eloquence, 
nothing  could  be  superior  to  him  in  style  or  in  action.  Pos- 
sessing a  most  musical  voice,  and  thoroughly  gifted  with 
every  oratorical  resource,  he  was  listened  to  with  profound 
silence,  broken  by  applause  only  at  the  end  of  some  fine 
period.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  he  had  an  astonishing 
aptitude  for  business,  and  an  intuitive  quickness  in  mastering 
the  details  of  the  most  complicated  questions,  and  the  reader 
may  have  an  idea  of  the  versatile  and  powerful  orator  whom 
France  has  just  lost." 

Though  M.  Berry  er  was,  during  most  of  his  professional 
life,  in  the  receipt  of  a  very  large  income,  he  lived  so  freely 
that  he  left  little  more  to  his  son  than  the  estate  which  was 
presented  to  him,  and  a  library  valued  at  half  a  million 
francs. 


JOHN    ELIOT, 

THE  APOSTLE  TO  THE  INDIANS. 


A  COPY  of  Eliot's  Indian  Bible  was  sold  by  auction,  a  few 
months  ago,  in  the  city  of  New  York,  for  one  thousand  and 
fifty  dollars.  The  same  copy  two  years  before  sold  for 
eleven  hundred  and  thirty  dollars.  These  are  high  prices 
for  a  dingy,  chunky  volume  which,  it  is  said,  only  one  man 
in  the  world  can  read,  — Mr.  Trumbull,  of  the  Historical 
Society  of  Connecticut,  a  descendant  of  John  Eliot.  But 
even  these  are  not  the  highest  prices  which  this  Bible  has 
realized.  A  copy  has  been  sold  for  fifteen  hundred  dollars  ; 
and  the  one  sold  the  other  day  would  probably  have  brought 
as  much,  if  the  times  had  been  favorable. 

I  must  confess  that  this  mania  for  possessing  volumes 
which  have  no  other  interest  except  that  of  rarity,  seems  to 
me  childish  and  absurd.  What  sense  can  there  be  in  giving 
a  thousand  dollars  for  an  unintelligible  book,  filled  with  such 
words  as  this,  which  only  has  the  peculiarity  of  being  a  little 
longer  than  any  of  the  others  :  "  Wutappesittukqussunnooh- 
wehtunkquoh  "  ? 

This  is  one  word  from  Eliot's  Bible,  and  it  signifies  (Mark 
1 :  40)  "  kneeling  down  to  him."  A  vast  number  of  the 
words  are  of  prodigious  length,  and  cannot  even  be  pro- 
nounced except  after  long  practice. 

John  Eliot,  the  translator  of  this  Bible,  who  was  born  in 
England  in  1604,  and  educated  at  the  Univers.ty  of  Cam- 
bridge, began  his  laborious  life  as  a  teacher  in  an  English 


594  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

grammar  school,  —  an  employment  which  he  justly  considered 
one  of  the  most  interesting  and  honorable  exercised  among 
men.  There  was  only  one  vocation,  he  used  to  say,  more 
important, —  that  of  minister;  and  into  this,  accordingly,  he 
entered  at  an  early  age.  Of  his  preaching  in  England,  we 
only  know  that  it  was  so  pleasing  to  a  congregation  of  Puri- 
tans, many  of  whom  were  about  to  emigrate  to  New  Eng- 
land, that  they  induced  him  to  emigrate  also,  and  obtained 
from  him  a  promise  that  when  they  were  settled  in  America, 
he  would  again  serve  them  as  one  of  their  religious  teachers. 
Accordingly,  in  1632,  when  he  was  twenty-eight  years  of 
age,  we  find  him  settled  as  "teacher"  of  the  church  in  Rox- 
bury,  which  was  then  a  village  three  miles  from  Boston.  A 
lovely  girl,  to  whom  he  was  engaged  to  be  married  before  he 
left  England,  joined  him  soon,  and  they  were  married,  and 
lived  happily  together  for  more  than  fifty  years. 

From  the  first  days  of  the  colony,  the  Indians  had  excited 
at  once  the  wonder,  compassion,  and  disgust  of  the  people. 
I  suppose  that  Cotton  Mather  expressed  the  general  feeling 
when  he  said  that,  although  no  one  knew  how  "  these  forlorn 
and  wretched  heathen  "  got  to  America,  "  yet  we  may  guess 
that  probably  the  devil  decoyed  those  miserable  savages,  in 
hopes  that  the  gospel  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  would  never 
come  here  to  destroy  or  disturb  his  absolute  empire  over 
them."  The  emphatic  Mather  italicizes  the  words  "  absolute 
empire."  He  appends  a  long  description  of  the  Indians 
and  their  mode  of  life,  from  which  it  is  evident,  that  if  as  a 
minister  and  Christian  he  had  a  sort  of  official  compassion 
for  them,  yet  as  a  man  he  held  them  in  abhorrence  and 
contempt. 

"  These  abject  creatures,"  he  says,  "  live  in  a  country  full 
of  mines,  but  were  never  owners  of  so  much  as  a  knife  till 
we  come  among  them ;  their  name  for  an  Englishman  was  a 


JOHN   ELIOT.  595 

Knife-man.  .  .  .  They  live  in  a  country  where  we  now 
have  all  the  conveniences  of  human  life ;  but  as  for  them, 
their  housing  is  nothing  but  a  few  mats  tied  about  poles 
fastened  in  the  earth.  .  .  .  They  live  in  a  country  full  of 
the  best  ship-timber  under  Heaven,  but  never  saw  a  ship 
till  some  came  f^om  Europe  hither.  .  .  .  No  arts  are 
understood  among  them,  except  just  so  far  as  to  maintain 
their  brutish  conversation,  which  is  little  more  than  is  to  be 
found  among  the  very  beavers  on  our  streams." 

Such  facts  as  these,  which  appear  to  have  stirred  the  con- 
temptuous wrath  of  Cotton  Mather,  excited  in  the  tenderly 
benevolent  mind  of  Eliot  a  profound  and  constant  pity.  He 
had,  moreover,  a  fancy  that  these  Indians  of  the  American 
wilderness  were  descended  from  the  Lost  Tribes  of  Israel, 
and  he  thought  that  perhaps  Englishmen  had  been  directed 
to  these  shores  as  the  appointed  means  of  their  restoration. 
Before  he  had  been  many  years  in  Roxbury,  and  while  still 
performing  his  pastoral  duties  (which,  indeed,  he  never 
resigned  but  with  his  life) ,  he  entered  upon  that  course  of 
heroic  toil  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians,  which  has  won 
for  him  with  posterity  the  title  of  the  Indian  Apostle. 

After  making  some  attempts  to  preach  to  the  Indians 
about  Roxbury  through  an  interpreter,  he  concluded  that  he 
could  accomplish  little  until  he  could  preach  to  them  in  their 
own  tongue.  He  hired  a  native  to  come  to  his  house  and  be 
his  teacher,  with  whose  assistance  he  slowly  and  painfully 
acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  language,  and  formed  a  system 
of  grammar  and  spelling,  which  he  recorded  in  a  treatise  for 
the  use  of  future  students.  It  was  not  until  1646,  however, 
when  he  was  forty-two  years  of  age,  that  he  felt  himself  able 
to  conduct  a  religious  service  in  the  language  of  the  red  men. 
He  first  preached  to  a  congregation  of  Indians  at  Nonantum, 
now  called  Newton,  a  few  miles  from  Boston 


596  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPEISE. 

It  was  an  interesting  occasion.  First  he  uttered  a  short 
prayer  in  the  Indian  tongue  ;  after  which  he  gave  an  outline 
of  the  facts  and  doctrines  of  Christianity,  as  held  by  the 
Puritans  of  his  time,  describing  particularly  the  character 
and  sufferings  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  exhorting  them  to  accept 
him  as  their  Saviour.  When  the  sermon  was  finished,  which 
we  may  imagine  was  delivered  with  an  anxious  mind  and 
faltering  tongue,  he  told  the  Indians  that  he  should  be  glad 
to  answer  any  questions  they  might  wish  to  propose  upon 
what  he  had  said.  One  of  them  asked  whether  Jesus  Christ 
would  be  able  to  understand  Indians,  if  they  prayed  in  their 
own  language.  Another,  who  had  misunderstood  the 
minister's  account  of  the  Deluge,  asked  him  how  the  world 
had  become  full  of  people  again,  if  they  were  all  once 
drowned.  Another  wished  to  know  how  God  could  create 
man  in  his  own  image,  since  it  was  forbidden  in  the  com-' 
mandment  to  make  the  image  of  God.  On  another  occasion, 
soon  after,  when  he  preached  a  similar  discourse,  he  was 
asked  how  it  came  to  pass  that  the  water  of  the  ocean  was 
salt,  and  river  water  fresh ;  and  why,  since  there  is  more 
water  than  land,  the  water  does  not  overflow  the  earth.  One 
Indian  inquired  how  it  was,  if  all  men  sprung  from  one 
father,  that  the  English  knew  God  and  Jesus  Christ,  and  the 
Indians  not. 

Having  thus  begun  his  labors,  he  pursued  them  with 
wonderful  zeal  and  courage,  roaming  the  wilderness  of  New 
England,  facing  dangers  undaunted,  and  submitting  to  hard- 
ships which  tasked  his  endurance  to  the  uttermost.  Without 
neglecting  his  duties  at  honie,  he  made  a  kind  of  missionary 
tour  twice  a  month,  preaching,  catechising,  establishing 
churches  ;  going  sometimes  as  far  as  the  end  of  Cape  Cod, — • 
a  tramp  through  the  sand  of  a  hundred  weary  miles.  Such 
success  had  he,  that  after  he  had  preached  five  years,  there 


JOHN   ELIOT.  597 

were  so  many  Indians  who  wished  to  live  in  a  Christian 
manner,  that  they  gathered  into  a  town  on  the  Charles  River, 
called  Natick.  This  town,  with  its  church,  was  built  in  the 
English  manner,  and  the  Indians  lived  there,  as  far  as 
Indians  could,  like  the  Puritans  around  them.  When  he  had 
been  preaching  fifteen  years,  there  were  as  many  as  twenty- 
four  Indians  regularly  preaching  to  Indian  congregations. 

His  Indian  Bible,  a  work  of  inconceivable  toil  and  diffi- 
culty, occupied  him  more  or  less  during  thirty  years  of  his 
life.  He  was  assisted  in  printing  it  by  a  Society  in  England 
formed  for  the  purpose,  which  gave  him  a  salary  as  mis- 
sionary of  fifty  pounds  a  year, —  all  of  which  he  expended 
upon  his  Bible, —  and  sent  over  types  and  a  printing-press. 

An  interesting  circumstance  of  the  printing  is,  that  one  of 
the  hands  employed  in  setting  the  type  and  working  the  press 
was  an  Indian.  He  had  been  so  far  educated  in  one  of  Eliot's 
Indian  schools  at  Cambridge,  as  to  read  and  write  very  well. 
He  served  a  regular  apprenticeship  to  the  printing  business, 
^and  was  employed  upon  Eliot's  Bible  for  many  years.  When 
King  Philip's  war  broke  out,  though  he  had  spent  almost  all 
his  life  among  the  whites,  the  dormant  savage  woke  within 
him,  and  he  ran  away  and  joined  the  forces  of  that  terrible 
chief.  He  survived  the  war,  and  when  the  Governor  issued 
his  proclamation  offering  a  free  pardon  to  all  Indians  surren- 
dering in  fifteen  days,  who  should  come  in  and  give  himself 
up  but  "James  Printer,"  as  this  Indian  was  named  I  He 
lived  at  Boston  many  years  after,  exercising  his  old  trade,  — 
the  only  Indian,  I  believe,  who  ever  belonged  to  the  distin- 
guished fraternity  of  printers. 

An  outline  has  been  preserved  of  a  sermon  preached  by 
one  of  Eliot's  Indian  preachers.  The  corn  having  been  much 
damaged  by  excessive  rains,  the  "praying  Indians,"  as  they 
were  termed,  appointed  a  day  of  fasting  and  humiliation. 


598  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTEKPKISE. 

The  preacher  in  question  selected  for  his  subject  the  sacrifice 
offered  by  Noah  of  every  clean  beast  and  fowl,  upon  which 
he  discoursed  in  this  strain  :  — 

K  A  little  I  shall  say,  according  to  that  little  I  know.  In  that 
Noah  sacrificed,  he  showed  himself  thankful ;  in  that  Noah  wor- 
shipped, he  showed  himself  godly ;  in  that  he  offered  clean  beasts, 
he  showed  that  God  is  a  holy  God.  And  all  that  come  to  God  must 
be  pure  and  clean.  Know  that  we  must  by  repentance  purge  our- 
selves ;  which  is  the  work  we  are  to  do  this  day.  Noah  sacrificed 
and  so  worshipped.  This  was  the  manner  of  old  time.  But  what 
sacrifices  have  we  now  to  offer !  I  shall  answer  by  that  in  Psalm 
4  ;  offer  to  God  the  sacrifice  of  righteousness,  and  put  your  trust 
in  the  Lord!" 

He  expanded  upon  these  ideas  very  much  as  Eliot  himself 
would  have  done,  urging  his  brethren  to  sacrifice  their  sins, 
even  those  which  were  dearest  to  them. 

Notwithstanding  these  flattering  appearances  of  success, 
neither  John  Eliot  nor  any  other  man  has  ever  succeeded  in 
truly  civilizing  one  Indian.  An  Indian  cannot  be  civilized. 
He  is  a  wild  man  by  nature,  and  when  you  tame  him  you 
destroy  him.  Eliot's  Indian  students,  whom  he  required  to 
renounce  hunting,  and  who  were  trained  to  live  as  English 
students  do,  became  consumptive,  and  they  either  resumed 
their  wild  way  of  life,  or  perished.  Never  were  missions 
conducted  with  more  energy,  and  sustained  with  more  deter- 
mination, than  those  of  the  fathers  of  New  England  among 
the  Indians ;  but  their  well-meant  labors  were  wasted  upon  a 
race  which  can  no  more  be  civilized  than  a  buffalo  can  be 
converted  into  a  steady-going  ox. 

"Have  you  had  any  real  success  with  your  Indians?"  I 
once  asked  of  a  most  estimable  Roman  Catholic  bishop,  who 
had  spent  thirty  years  in  a  mission  in  the  wilderness  near 
Lake  Superior. 


JOHN  ELIOT.  599 

w  I  have  succeeded,"  he  replied,  "  in  making  some  of  them 
pretty  good  Christians,  but  I  have  not  succeeded  in  making 
any  of  them  men." 

The  apostle  Eliot,  however,  labored  on  in  unquestioning 
faith  to  the  end ;  firmly  believing,  that  if  he  could  npt  make 
men  of  his  Indians,  he  at  least  saved  their  souls  from  eternal 
torment.  The  happy  men  in  this  world  are  those  who  devote 
themselves,  in  a  disinterested  spirit,  to  the  promotion  of 
human  welfare ;  and  Eliot,  whose  heart  was  one  lump  of 
benevolence,  passed  his  days  in  tranquil  delight,  loving  and 
beloved.  Besides  his  Bible,  he  translated  primers,  cate- 
chisms, grammars,  and  several  religious  works  into  the  Indian 
tongue.  He  died  in  1690,  aged  eighty-six,  leaving  behind 
him  a  grandson,  Jared  Eliot,  the  most  eminent  physician  in 
New  England,  and  a  man  of  great  public  spirit. 

38 


LIFE,   TRIAL,  AND  EXECUTION  OF 

ALGEKNON      SIDNEY. 


THAT  splendid  spendthrift,  Louis  XIV.,  King  of  France, 
while  he  was  hunting  one  day,  in  a  royal  park  near  Paris, 
noticed  among  the  throng  of  hunters  an  Englishman, 
mounted  upon  an  exceedingly  superb  and  high-mettled 
horse.  Foreigners  of  rank  were  permitted  to  share  in  the 
sports  of  the  King,  whose  hunting  retinue  was  frequently 
joined  by  gentlemen  who  had  been  presented  to  him  by 
ambassadors  residing  at  this  gorgeous  court. 

The  King  was  so  captivated  by  the  stranger's  horse  that 
he  determined  to  possess  it,  and  sent  a  messenger  to  ask  the 
owner  to  name  the  price  and  deliver  the  animal.  This  was 
the  King's  way  of  buying  anything  upon  which  he  had  fixed 
covetous  eyes,  and  no  one  ever  presumed  to  refuse  him. 
But  this  Englishman,  to  the  surprise  of  the  messenger,  and 
to  the  great  irritation  of  the  King,  replied  to  the  proposal, 
that  his  horse  was  not  for  sale.  The  haughty  monarch 
caused  a  liberal  price  for  a  horse  to  be  counted  out,  and 
sent  it  to  the  Englishman,  with  a  positive  order  to  accept 
the  same  and  surrender  the  animal.  An  exile  from  his 
native  land,  where,  at  that  bad  time,  there  was  no  justice  for 
such  as  he,  where  king  and  ministers  were  the  paid  servants 
of  the  French  monarch,  he  seemed  to  have  no  choice  but  to 
obey.  But  this  was  a  man  of  the  heroic  type.  He  drew  a 
pistol  and  shot  the  horse  through  the  head,  saying  :  — 


602  TEIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

"My  horse  was  born  a  free  creature,  has  served  a  free 
man,  and  shall  not  be  mastered  by  a  king  of  slaves." 

There  you  have  Algernon  Sidney,  the  blunt,  brave,  noble- 
minded  Republican,  among  the  first  of  his  time  and  country 
who  clearly  understood  the  rights  of  man  and  the  just  foun- 
dation of  human  government,  —  the  forerunner  of  our  Jeffer- 
son and  Madison. 

There  are  two  noted  Sidneys  in  modern  English  history. 
One  was  that  knightly  gentleman,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  is 
remembered  and  beloved,  because,  on  the  battle-field,  he 
waved  aside  the  proffered  draught  of  water,  and  had  it  given 
to  a  wounded  soldier,  who,  he  thought,  needed  it  more. 
Algernon  Sidney  was  his  grandnephew,  the  son  of  a  nephew 
of  Sir  Philip.  Algernon's  father  was  the  Earl  of  Leicester, 
a  wealthy  and  powerful  nobleman,  who  held  conspicuous 
posts  both  under  king  and  parliament.  That  these  two 
Sidneys  were  alike  in  character,  as  well  aj  akin  by.  blood, 
we  might  infer  from  a  single  incident  in  the  life  of  Alger- 
non, which  marks  the  gentleman  as  unmistakably  and  as 
grandly  as  Sir  Philip's  refusal  of  the  water. 

Though  the  son  of  one  of  the  chief  of  England's  nobility, 
he  sided  with  the  parliament  against  the  king,  and,  while 
still  a  very  young  man,  commanded  under  CromwelPs  eye  a 
regiment  of  horse  at  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  where  he 
charged  the  foe  with  brilliant  impetuosity,  returning  from 
the  fight  covered  with  wounds.  Unable  from  his  lameness 
to  serve  again  in  the  field  during  the  war,  he  entered  the 
House  of  Commons,  where,  by  voice  and  vote,  he  still 
labored  for  the  success  of  the  parliamentary  cause. 

Victory  crowned  the  united  efforts  of  warriors  and  states- 
men. Then,  as  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  differences 
of  opinion  arose  among  the  chiefs,  particularly  with  regard 
to  the  fate  of  the  king.  Cromwell,  from  the  first,  had 


ALGERNON   SIDNEY.  603 

regarded  Charles  merely  as  the  chief  of  the  enemies  of  the 
country,  the  leader  of  the  great  faction  hostile  to  the  ancient 
liberties  of  England  and  the  natural  rights  of  man.  Long 
ago  he  had  said  to  his  troops :  — 

"  If  I  should  meet  King  Charles  in  the  body  of  the  enemy, 
I  would  as  soon  discharge  my  pistol  upon  him  as  upon  any 
private  man ;  and  for  any  soldier  present  who  is  troubled 
with  a  conscience  that  will  not  let  him  do  the  like,  I  advise 
him  to  quit  the  service  he  is  engaged  in." 

Feeling  thus  at  the  beginning  of  the  struggle,  Cromwell 
was  not  disposed  to  respect  the  kingly  character  when  at 
length  Charles  was  in  his  power.  Sidney,  however,  and 
many  of  his  friends,  though  fully  alive  to  the  king's  guilt, 
and  prepared  to  decree  his  deposition,  deemed  it  impolitic 
and  unjust  to  put  him  to  death.  When  the  act  passed  for 
bringing  the  king  to  trial,  Sidney  was  spending  a  few  days 
at  the  seat  of  his  father,  the  Earl  of  Leicester.  On  hearing 
the  news,  he  hastened  to  London,  where  he  heard,  for  the 
first  time,  that  his  own  name  was  in  the  list  of  persons 
appointed  to  try  the  king. 

"I  presently,"  he  says,  "  went  to  the  Painted  Chamber, 
where  those  who  were  nominated  for  judges  were  assem- 
bled, A  debate  was  raised,  and  I  did  positively  oppose 
Cromwell  and  Bradshaw  and  others  who  would  have  the 
trial  to  go  on,  and  drew  my  reasons  from  these  two  points : 
First,  the  king  could  be  tried  by  no  court.  Secondly,  that 
no  man  could  be  tried  by  that  court.  This  being  alleged  in 
vain,  and  Cromwell  using  these  formal  words,  'I  tell  you 
we  will  cut  off  his  head  with  the  crown  upon  it,'  I  replied, 
'  You  may  take  your  own  course  ;  I  cannot  stop  you ;  but  I 
will  keep  myself  clean  from  having  any  hand  in  this  busi- 
ness,' and  immediately  went  out  of  the  room  and  never 
returned.  This  is  all  that  passed  publicly,  or  that  can  with 


604  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTEKPKISE. 

truth  be  recorded  or  taken  notice  of.  I  had  an  intention 
which  is  not  very  fit  for  a  letter." 

His  intention  was,  as  his  friends  conjectured,  to  move,  in 
the  House,  the  formal  deposition  of  the  king ;  but  Cromwell 
carried  the  day.  The  king  was  tried,  condemned,  and  exe- 
cuted ;  and  the  Lord  Protector  ruled  in  his  stead. 

Now,  here  is  the  point  that  shows  the  high  tone  and  noble 
breeding  of  Algernon  Sidney.  In  the  secret  councils  of  his 
party  he  had  opposed  the  trial  and  execution  of  the  king, 
and  he  even  signified  to  the  public  his  disapproval  by  absent- 
ing himself  from  London  till  the  deed  was  done  ;  but,  imme- 
diately after,  he  resumed  his  attendance  in  Parliament,  and 
continued  to  give  his  aid  in  the  settlement  of  the  govern- 
ment, still  faithful  to  the  liberal  cause.  And  when,  in  after 
years,  the  execution  of  Charles  was  held  throughout  Europe 
to  be  an  act  that  covered  the  perpetrators  with  the  blackest 
infamy,  Sidney  never  sought,  by  avowing  his  innocence,  to 
escape  his  share  of  the  odium.  From  Denmark,  after  the 
Restoration,  he  wrote  to  his  father  :  — 

"  I  do  avow  that,  since  I  came  into  Denmark,  I  have  many  times 
so  justified  that  act,  as  people  did  believe  I  had  a  hand  in  it ;  and 
never  did  disavow  it,  unless  it  were  to  the  king  of  Sweden  and 
Grand  Maitre  of  Denmark,  who  asked  me  privately." 

Such  behavior  marks  the  difference  between  men  of  ordi- 
nary and  men  of  noble  nature.  Common  men  say,  take 
care  of  number  one.  The  heroes,  ornaments,  and  saviours  of 
our  race  are  apt  to  take  care  of  every  one  except  number  one. 

Sidney  opposed  Oliver  Cromwell  on  another  memorable 
occasion,  when  the  Protector  dispersed  the  Long  Parliament, 
rising  in  his  place,  and  crying  out :  — 

"  You  are  no  Parliament !  I  say  you  are  no  Parliament !  I  '11 
put  an  end  to  your  sitting.  Begone!  Give  way  to  honester 
men ! " 


ALGERNON   SIDNEY.  605 

When  Cromwell  had  thus  spoken,  he  stamped  upon  the 
floor.  The  door  flew  open.  A  file  of  soldiers  marched  in 
and  drove  out  the  members, —  all  but  two,  the  Speaker  and 
Algernon  Sidney,  who  sat  nearest  him.  These  would  not 
yield  except  to  force  actually  applied  to  their  persons. 
Pointing  to  the  Speaker,  Cromwell  shouted,  — 

"Fetch  him  down!" 

One  of  Cromwell's  adherents,  Harrison,  went  to  the 
Speaker,  and  asked  him  to  leave  his  seat  and  retire  from 
the  hall. 

"I  will  not  come  down  till  I  am  forced,"  said  the  Speaker. 

w  Take  him  down  !  "  cried  Cromwell. 

"  Sir,"  said  Harrison,  pulling  the  Speaker  by  the  gown, 
"  I  will  lend  you  a  hand." 

Upon  this  the  Speaker  descended  from  his  chair,  and  with- 
drew. Sidney  alone  remained. 

"Put  him  out !  "  said  Cromwell,  pointing  to  his  old  com- 
rade in  arms. 

Harrison  went  to  Sidney,  and  urged  him  to  obey. 

"  I  will  not  go  out,"  said  Sidney.. 

w  Put  him  out !  "  repeated  Cromwell. 

Two  of  Cromwell's  satellites  then  placed  their  hands  upon 
the  shoulders  of  this  last  representative  of  England's  free- 
dom, thus  applying  the  requisite  technical  "force,"  upon 
which  Sidney  rose  and  left  the  room.  Then  it  was  that 
Cromwell,  pointing  to  the  Speaker's  mace,  cried  out :  "  Take 
away  that  bauble  !  " 

With  his  own  hands  he  locked  the  door,  and  carried  off  the 
key  to  his  palace,  the  absolute  lord  of  England.  Sidney 
withdrew  to  the  family  seat  in  the  country,  and  took  no  part 
in  public  life  till  Cromwell's  death  restored  parliamentary 
government.  He  then  resumed  the  seat  from  which  he  had 
been  ejected,  resumed  his  place  in  the  executive  government, 


606  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

under  Kichard,  Cromwell's  son.  During  the  short  period 
that  elapsed  between  the  death  of  Oliver  Cromwell  and  the 
return  of  Charles  II.,  Sidney  accepted  an  important  diplo- 
matic mission  to  Denmark,  and  there  he  was  residing  when 
the  news  reached  him  of  the  restoration  of  the  King.  He 
knew  not  whether  to  remain  or  return  home,  nor  whether  to 
continue  or  renounce  his  diplomatic  character.  He  was  not 
long  in  learning,  however,  that  the  only  terms  upon  which 
he  could  safely  tread  again  his  native  soil,  were  such  as  he 
could  not  comply  with  without  indelible  dishonor  :  namely, 
the  acknowledgment  that  he  had  done  wrong  in  opposing 
the  late  king,  and  asking  pardon  of  the  new  one. 

"I  had  rather,"  he  wrote,  "  be  a  vagabond  all  my  life  than 
buy  my  own  country  at  so  dear  a  rate." 

He  said  that  on  a  calm  review  of  the  past  he  could  not 
think  of  one  act  of  his,  in  connection  with  the  late  civil 
wars,  which  he  did  not  think  justified  by  the  state  of  things 
at  the  time. 

"  This,"  he  added,  "  is  my  strength,  and  I  thank  God  by 
this  I  enjoy  very  serene  thoughts.  If  I  lose  this  by  vile  and 
unworthy  submissions,  acknowledgment  of  errors,  asking 
pardon,  or  the  like,  I  shall,  from  that  moment,  be  the  miser- 
ablest  man  alive,  and  the  scorn  of  all  men." 

And  so,  for  seventeen  years,  Algernon  Sidney  remained 
an  exile  and  a  wanderer;  always  protesting  his  willingness 
to  obey  the  king,  because  Parliament  had  accepted  him ,  and 
made  him  the  lawful  head  of  the  government ;  but  firmly 
refusing  to  express  the  slightest  contrition  for  the  part  he 
had  taken  in  the  rebellion.  His  father,  at  length,  a  very 
aged  man,  feeling  the  approach  of  death,  urged  him  to  ask 
the  government  to  permit  his  return  and  brief  stay  in  Eng- 
land, that  they  might  meet  once  more.  Sidney  complied  ; 
obtained  permission ;  saw  his  father,  and  was  present  at  his 
death,  which  occurred  six  weeks  after. 


ALGERNON   SIDNEY.  607 

Happy  would  it  have  been  for  him,  if  he  had  returned  to 
France,  as  he  had  intended.  Remaining,  to  settle  some 
affairs  growing  out  of  a  disputed  clause  of  his  father's  will, 
he  was  arrested  on  a  groundless  charge  of  being  concerned 
in  a  conspiracy  to  dethrone  the  king,  and  bestow  the  crown 
upon  the  Duke  of  Monmouth,  the  king's  illegitimate  son, 

A  witty  French  author,  descanting  upon  the  foibles  of  the 
fair  sex,  remarks  that  a  woman  often  has  two  reasons  for 
her  conduct :  First,  the  reason ;  secondly,  the  reason  that 
she  gives. 

It  is  no  more  true  of  women  than  of  men.  In  the  olden 
time,  when  diplomacy  was  reckoned  an  important  and  mys- 
terious science,  it  was  eminently  true  of  governments,  which 
seldom  avowed  the  reason  that  actually  controlled  their 
action.  In  dooming  Algernon  Sidney  to  death,  for  example, 
the  government  of  England  pretended  that  that  admirable 
gentleman  had  conspired  to  dethrone  Charles  II.  and  to  give 
the  crown  to  the  Duke  of  Monmouth,  the  king's  illegitimate 
son.  That  was  the  pretext.  The  real  reason  was,  that 
Algernon  Sidney  held  in  the  deepest  abhorrence  and  con- 
tempt the  legitimate  heir,  the  king's  brother,  the  Duke  of 
York,  whose  accession  to  the  throne  a  considerable  party 
opposed.  Sidney  was  one  of  the  leaders  of  this  party  in 
Parliament,  and  gave  the  most  earnest  support  to  a  bill 
excluding  the  Duke  of  York  from  the  succession.  The  king 
dissolved  the  Parliament  in  the  midst  of  the  session,  and  the 
Duke  of  York  wrote  to  his  brother,  applauding  this  course, 
and  urging  other  arbitrary  measures. 

t?  The  time,"  wrote  he,  "  has  come  to  be  truly  king,  or  to 
perish !  No  more  parliaments.  It  is  to  France  you  must 
have  recourse  for  subsidies  ! " 

The  creatures  of  the  Duke  were  reckless  enough  to  avow 
that  their  master  had  given  this  advice ;  and  it  was  Algernon 


608  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

Sidney  who  defended  Parliament,  and  denounced  the  Duko 
for  his  treachery  to  the  independence  of  his  country.  This 
he  did  in  a  very  able,  eloquent  pamphlet,  which  had  great 
success  with  the  public. 

"  Good  God  !  "  exclaimed  the  indignant  Sidney,  "  to  what 
a  condition  is  this  kingdom  reduced,  when  the  ministers  and 
agents  of  the  only  prince  in  the  world  who  can  have  designs 
against  us,  or  of  whom  we  ought  to  be  afraid,  are  not  only 
made  acquainted  with  the  most  secret  passages  of  state,  but 
are  made  our  chief  ministers  too,  and  have  the  principal 
conduct  of  our  affairs  !  And  let  the  world  judge  if .  the 
Commons  had  not  reason  for  their  vote,  when  they  declared 
those  eminent  persons  who  manage  things  at  this  rate,  to  be 
enemies  to  the  king  and  kingdom,  and  promoters  of  the 
French  interests." 

It  was  well  known  whom  he  meant  by  "  those  eminent 
persons " ;  the  cruel  and  vindictive  Duke  of  York  was,  at 
least,  well  aware  of  the  author's  meaning. 

Sidney,  too,  had  mortally  offended  the  king,  and  the 
whole  party  of  tories  and  non-resistants,  by  the  freedom 
with  which  he  denounced  the  arbitrary  principles  then 
affected  by  all  who  aspired  to  favor  or  place. 

"Do  the  people,"  said  he,  in  one  of  his  popular  tracts, 
"  make  the  king,  or  the  king  make  the  people  ?  Is  the  king 
for  the  people  or  the  people  for  the  king?  Did  God  create 
the  Hebrews  that  Saul  might  reign  over  them?  or  did  they, 
from  an  opinion  of  procuring  their  own  good,  ask  a  king  that 
might  judge  them  and  fight  their  battles  ?  " 

He  aggravated  the  royal  party  still  further  by  justifying 
the  deposition  of  such  kings  as  Charles  I. ,  who  proved  faith- 
less to  their  trust,  by  transcending  or  abusing  their  authority. 
Governments,  he  maintained,  exist  for  the  good  of  the  gov 
erned,  and  have  no  rightful  authority  except  by  the  consent 


ALGEKNON   SIDNEY.  609 

of  the  governed.  Imagine  Charles  II.,  the  Duke  of  York, 
and  their  friends,  reading  a  passage  like  this  in  a  tract  by 
Algernon  Sidney :  — 

"  As  absolute  monarchy  cannot  subsist  unless  the  prevailing  part 
of  the  people  be  corrupted,  and  free  or  popular  government  must  cer- 
tainly perish  unless  they  be  preserved  in  a  great  measure  free -from 
vices.  I  doubt  whether  any  better  reason  can  be  given  why  there 
have  been,  and  are,  more  monarchies  than  popular  governments  in 
the  world,  than  that  nations  are  more  easily  drawn  into  corruption 
than  defended  from  it ;  and  I  think  that  monarchy  can  be  said  to 
be  natural  in  no  other  sense  than  that  our  depraved  nature  is  most 
inclined  to  that  which  is  worst." 

That  must  have  been  unpalatable  doctrine  to  the  men  who 
were  doing  their  utmost  to  bring  England  under  the  yoke  of 
an  absolute  monarch.  The  time  came  when  they  could 
wreak  a  bloody  vengeance  upon  the  author  of  sentiments  so 
hostile  to  their  scheme.  Upon  a  groundless  charge  of  com- 
plicity with  the  designs  of  Monmouth,  the  partisans  of  the 
Duke  of  York  urged  his  arrest  and  trial  for  treason. 

Sidney  had  reached  the  age  of  sixty-one  years.  On  the 
26th  of  June,  1683,  after  a  morning  passed  in  study,  he  was 
seated  at  dinner  with  a  few  friends,  unapprehensive  of  dan- 
ger. An  officer  entered  the  apartment,  bearing  an  order 
from  the  .Privy  Council,  requiring  him  to  appear  before 
them,  and  ordering  the  seizure  of  his  papers.  Being  con- 
ducted to  the  council  chamber,  he  replied  to  all  questions, 
that,  upon  the  production  of  any  evidence  implicating  him, 'he 
was  ready  to  meet  it,  and  refute  it ;  but  till  that  was  done,  he 
had  nothing  to  say.  Upon  this  he  was  committed-to  the  Tower 
upon  a  charge  of  high  treason,  no  hint  being  given  him  of  the 
particulars  or  the  grounds  of  the  accusation. 

There  were  no  grounds.  The  government  had  no  evi- 
dence criminating  him ;  but  they  were  resolved  to  find  some, 


610  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

or  to  make  it.  Among  other  expedients,  they  sent  a  com- 
mittee to  visit  the  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  hoping  to  extort 
or  beguile  something  from  him  that  could  be  used  against  him. 
But  Sidney  said  to  them  in  his  lofty  manner :  — 

"You  seem  to  want  evidence,  and  to  have  come  to  draw  it  from 
my  own  mouth ;  but  you  shall  have  nothing  from  me." 

He  could  easily  foresee  his  doom ;  for  while  he  lay  in  the 
Tower,  denied  all  intercourse  with  friends  or  counsel,  Lord 
William  Russell,  a  fellow-prisoner,  died  upon  the  block,  a 
martyr  to  the  very  principles  which  Sidney  had  defended  so 
long  by  voice,  vote,  and  pen.  After  four  months'  imprison- 
ment, he  was  arraigned  before  the  infamous  Jeffries,  that 
creature  of  the  court  whom  the  Duke  of  York,  when  he 
became  James  II.,  rewarded  for  his  services  in  these  trials, 
by  making  him  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England.  The 
trial  was  the  merest  mockery  of  justice.  The  indictment, 
which  the  prisoner  never  saw,  and  never  heard  till  he  heard 
it  read  in  court  that  day,  was  so  long,  so  involved,  and 
couched  in  Latin  so  technical,  that  he  could  not  understand 
what  he  was  charged  with.  The  prisoner  objected  to  the 
indictment.  The  judge  told  him  he  must  plead  guilty  or 
not  guilty ;  but  the  prosecuting  attorney  said  he  had  no 
objection  to  the  prisoner  taking  exception  to  the  indictment, 
if  he  chose  to  run  the  risk. 

"  I  presume,"  rejoined  Sidney,  puzzled  by  these  proceed- 
ings, w  I  presume  your  lordship  will  direct  me,  for  I  am  an 
ignorant  man  in  matters  of  this  kind.  I  may  be  easily  sur- 
prised in  it.  I  never  was  at  a  trial  in  my  life,  of  anybody, 
and  never  read  a  law  book." 

The  false  and  heartless  knave  of  a  chief-justice,  unmoved 
by  this  touching  appeal,  refused  all  useful  information,  and 
told  the  prisoner  that  he  must  either  plead  to  the  indict- 


ALGERNON   SIDNEY.  611 

inent,  or  demur ;  and  if  he  should  demur,  and  not  be  able 
to  sustain  his  objection,  his  life  was  forfeit  without  further 
trial.  Still  the  prisoner  hesitated.  It  was  not  till  Jeffries 
threatened  to  proceed  to  instant  judgment,  that  he  reluc- 
tantly consented  to  plead  not  guilty.  A  hireling  witness 
and  a  packed  jury  completed  what  a  corrupt  judge  had 
begun.  Passages  from  the  papers  seized  in  Sidney's  own 
house  were  read  in  court  as  evidence  against  him ;  some  of 
which  had  been  written  twenty  years  before,  as  part  of  a 
treatise  upon  government.  One  sentence,  at  which  Jeffries 
pretended  to  be  shocked,  and  which  the  prosecuting  attorney 
held  up  to  the  execration  of  an  ignorant  and  bigoted  jury, 
was  this :  — 

"  The  general  revolt  of  a  nation  from  its  own  magistrates  can 
never  be  called  a  rebellion." 

This  was  held  to  justify,  not  only  the  revolt  against 
Charles  I.,  but  any  future  revolt  against  Charles  II.  or  his 
successors ;  and  it  was  in  vain  that  Sidney  called  the  atten- 
tion of  the  jury  to  the  fact  that  the  paper  upon  which  the 
offensive  words  were  written  was  yellow  with  age. 

"If  you  believe,"  said  Jeffries,  in  his  charge  to  the  jury, 
w  that  that  was  Colonel  Sidney's  book,  no  man  can  doubt 
but  it  is  sufficient  evidence  that  he  is  guilty  of  compassing 
and  imagining  the  death  of  the  king.  .  .  .  Gentlemen,  I 
must  tell  you  I  think  I  ought  more  than  ordinarily  to  press 
this  upon  you,  because  I  know  the  misfortunes  of  the  late 
unhappy  rebellion,  and  the  bringing  the  late  blessed  king  to 
the  scaffold,  was  first  begun  by  such  kind  of  principles. 
They  cried,  he  had  betrayed  the  trust  that  was  delegated  to 
him  from  the  people." 

The  trial  lasted  from  ten  in  the  morning  until  six  in  the 
evening;  and  during  the  whole  period,  Sidney  not  only 


612  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

displayed  his  constitutional  firmness  and  courage,  but  a 
promptitude  and  skill  in  meeting  the  points  made  by  the 
attorney  and  the  judge,  which  would  have  secured  his 
triumphant  acquittal,  if  the  jury  had  been  intelligent  and 
uncorrupt.  After  half  an  hour's  absence  from  their  box,  the 
jury  returned  with  a  verdict  of  Guilty;  and  a  few  days 
after,  the  prisoner  was  brought  again  to  the  court-room,  to 
receive  his  sentence.  When  asked  what  he  had  to  say  why 
sentence  should  not  be  pronounced,  he  attempted  to  speak, 
but  was  rudely  interrupted  by  one  of  the  associate  justices, 
and  all  his  exceptions  were  contemptuously  set  aside  by 
Jeffries,  who  seemed  impatient  to  sentence  him.  When  the 
sentence  had  been  pronounced,  Sidney,  raising  his  hands  to 
heaven,  uttered  these  words  :  — 

"  Then,  O  God,  I  beseech  Thee  to  sanctify  these  sufferings  unto 
me,  and  impute  not  my  blood  to  the  country,  nor  to  the  great  city 
through  which  I  am  to  be  drawn ;  let  no  inquisition  be  made  for  it, 
but,  if  any,  and  the  shedding  of  blood  that  is  innocent  must  be 
avenged,  let  the  weight  of  it  fall  upon  those  that  maliciously  per- 
secute me  for  righteousness'  sake ! " 

A  week  later,  he  ascended  the  scaffold  on  Tower  Hill, 
with  the  calm  fortitude  that  belonged  to  his  character.  To 
the  sheriff,  who  asked  him  if  he  had  anything  to  say  to  the 
people,  he  replied  :  — 

"  I  have  made  my  peace  with  God,  and  have  nothing  to  say  to 
men ;  but  here  is  a  paper  of  what  I  have  to  say/' 

After  removing  some  of  his  upper  garments,  he  laid  his 
head  upon  the  block  with  the  utmost  serenity  of  manner ; 
and  when  the  executioner,  according  to  the  customary  form, 
asked  him  if  he  should  rise  again,  he  quietly  replied :  — 

"  Not  till  the  general  resurrection.     Strike  on." 


ALGERNON   SIDNEY.  613 

A  moment  after,  the  axe  descended,  severing  the  head  at 
a  blow,  and  the  executioner  held  it  up  to  the  multitude  as 
the  head  of  a  traitor.  It  was  the  noblest  head  in  England, 
and  under  it  had  beaten  one  of  the  noblest  hearts. 

I  have  seen  —  and  the  reader  may  see  when  he  visits  the 
Tower  of  London  —  the  block  upon  which  Sidney's  head 
was  laid,  and  the  axe  with  which  it  was  severed  from  the 
body.  From  the  number  of  cuts  in  the  block,  it  is  evident 
that  it  was  often  used;  and  the  reader,  if  he  chooses,  may 
indulge  his  fancy,  and  guess  which  of  the  cuts  records  the 
execution  of  Lady  Jane  Grey,  which  that  of  Charles  I., 
which  that  of  Lord  William  Russell,  and  which  that  of  this 
noblest  of  them  all  —  Algernon  Sidney. 


THE  CITY  OF  ST.  LOUIS. 


ST.  Louis  is  an  immense  surprise  to  visitors  from  the 
Eastern  States,  particularly  to  those  who  come  round  to  it 
from  furious  and  thundering  Chicago.  It  has  stolen  into 
greatness  without  our  knowing  much  about  it.  If  Chicago 
may  be  styled  the  New  York,  St.  Louis  is  the  serene  and  com- 
fortable Philadelphia,  of  the  West.  Having  passed  through 
its  wooden  period,  to  that  of  solid  brick  and  stone,  it  has  a 
refined  and  finished  appearance,  and  there  is  something  in 
the  aspect  of  the  place  which  indicates  that  people  there  find 
time  to  live,  as  well  as  accumulate  the  means  of  living. 
Chicago  amuses,  amazes,  bewilders,  and  exhausts  the  trav- 
eller ;  St.  Louis  rests  and  restores  him. 

The  railroad  ride  of  two  hundred  and  eighty  miles  from 
Chicago  does  not  promise  much  for  the  city  at  the  end  of  it. 
At  Springfield,  the  capital  of  Illinois,  the  train  bleeds  civil- 
ization at  every  pore.  Away  goes  the  lawyer  who  has  been 
solacing  himself  with  Mr.  Lowell's  last  volume,  and  away 
goes  every  one  else  almost  who  appears  to  be  capable  of  a 
similar  feat.  After  Springfield,  the  cars  fill  with  another 
kind  of  people,  —  rough,  candid,  round-faced  simpletons, 
the  sport  of  politicians,  who,  on  one  side  of  an  imaginary 
line,  make  them  elect  Democrats  to  Congress,  and,  on  the 
other,  fight  to  destroy  their  country.  What  is  this  we  hear  ? 
"  Give  Pemberton  as  many  men  as  Grant  had,  and  he  'd 
whip  him  before  breakfast."  And  again,  "That  Stonewall 
Jackson  of  yours  was  a  mighty  smart  fellow."  To  which  the 

39 


616  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

flattered  Southern  brother  modestly  replies,  as  if  to  waive 
the  compliment,  "  He  was  a  very  pious  man." 

It  is  a  strange  state  of  things  in  a  country,  when  a  day's 
ride  transports  us  to  a  region  which  reveres  what  we  laugh 
at,  and  loathes  what  we  adore.  It  is  strange  to  travel  in 
one  morning,  without  change  of  cars,  from  the  nineteenth 
century  to  the  eighteenth.  It  is  strange  to  be  at  9  A.  M.  at 
Abraham  Lincoln's  tomb,  and  see  pilgrims  approach  it  with 
uncovered  head,  and  at  12  M.  to  find  yourself  surrounded 
by  people  who  affect  to  hold  in  contempt  all  that  he  repre- 
sented, without  having  the  slightest  understanding  of  it. 
Nor  less  startling  is  it,  after  a  long  ride  over  unpeopled 
prairies,  attired  in  the  dismal  hue  of  November,  to  be  shot 
out  upon  the  shore  of  the  Mississippi,  in  view  of  a  scene  so 
full  of  novelty  and  wonder  as  that  which  St.  Louis  presents 
on  the  opposite  bank.  The  three  railroads  which  connect 
St.  Louis  with  the  Northern,  Southern,  and  Eastern  States, 
as  well  as  the  short  lines  which  run  back  a  few  miles  to  the 
mines  that  supply  the  city  with  coal,  all  terminate  here ;  so 
that  the  river  severs  the  city  from  all  the  noise  and  litter  of 
the  railroads.  The  bridge,  however,  will  soon  send  the  trains 
screaming  through  the  town.  At  present,  it  requires  seven 
hundred  horses,  two  or  three  hundred  men,  and  a  dozen 
large  and  powerful  ferry-boats,  to  convey  across  this  half- 
mile  of  swift  and  turbid  water  the  passengers  and  merchan- 
dise brought  to  the  eastern  bank  by  the  railroads. 

The  Mississippi,  like  Shakespeare,  Niagara  Falls,  the 
Pyramids,  the  unteachable  ignorance  of  an  original  Seces- 
sionist, and  many  other  stupendous  things  in  nature  and  art, 
does  not  reveal  its  greatness  all  at  once.  When,  however, 
the  stranger  is  informed,  and  sees  himself  the  evidence  of 
the  fact,  that  the  river,  which  now  appears  so  insignificant, 
sometimes  creeps  up  that  steep,  wide  levee,  and  fills  all  that 


THE   CITY  OF   ST.    LOUIS.  617 

broad  w  American  Bottom "  miles  back  to  the  "bluffs,"  he 
begins  to  suspect  that  the  Father  of  Waters  may,  after  all, 
be  equal  to  its  reputation.  Such  ferries  as  those  by  which  we 
cross  the  Hudson  and  the  Delaware  are  impossible  upon  a 
river  so  swift  and  so  capricious  as  this.  The  ferry-boat  is  built 
like  other  steamboats,  except  that  it  is  wider  and  stronger. 
With  its  head  up  the  stream,  it  lies  alongside  of  a  barge  to 
receive  its  enormous  freight  of  coal- wagons,  omnibuses, 
express-wagons,  mail- wagons,  carts,  and  loose  mules  enough 
to  fill  the  interstices.  Being  let  go,  the  boat,  always  headed 
to  the  impetuous  flood,  swings  across, — the  engine  merely 
keeping  the  huge  mass  from  being  carried  away  down  the 
stream. 

Seen  from  the  top  of  the  ferry-boat,  St.  Louis  is  a  curved 
line  of  steamboats,  a  mile  and  a  half  long,  without  a  single 
mast  or  sail  among  them.  The  whole  number  of  steamboats 
plying  between  this  city  and  other  river  towns  is  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five,  of  which  one  hundred  may  frequently 
be  seen  in  port  at  once,  ranged  along  the  levee  in  close 
order,  with  their  sterns  slanting  down  the  stream,  and  their 
bows  thrust  against  the  treacherous  sand  of  the  shore,  each 
boat  presenting  a  scene  of  the  third  act  of  "  The  Octoroon." 
Any  one  who  has  witnessed  Mr.  Bourcicault's  excellent  play 
of  that  name  has  only  to  imagine  the  steamboat  scene 
stretched  out  a  mile  and  a  half,  and  throw  in  a  few  hundred 
mules  and  colored  men, — the  latter  driving  the  former  by 
means  of  the  voice  and  whip,  —  and  he  will  have  before  him 
a  correct  view  of  the  St.  Louis  levee.  Chicago  smiles  at 
the  necessity  under  which  St.  Louis  labors  of  carrying  its 
merchandise  up  and  down  that  very  wide,  rough,  and  steep 
bank,  and  contemplates  with  fine  complacency  its  own  con- 
venient river,  which  brings  the  grain,  the  cattle,  the  boards, 
and  every  box  and  bale  to  the  precise  spot  where  it  is 


618  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

wanted,  from  which  it  is  hoisted  to  the  warehouse  without 
the  agency  of  human  muscle.  Chicago  laughs  at  the  idea 
of  such  a  town  competing  for  the  trade  of  the  prairies  with 
a  city  of  seventeen  elevators.  But  let  Chicago  take  note  : 
St.  Louis,  which  for  many  years  supposed  elevators  impos- 
sible on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  now  has  elevators 
in  most  successful  operation.  The  difficulty  caused  by  the 
ever-changing  height  of  the  river  is  overcome  in  the  sim- 
plest manner.  When  the  river  is  low,  the  huge  spout  which 
connects  the  elevator  with  the  boat  is  lengthened,  and  as  the 
river  rises  it  is  shortened.  Such  success  had  the  first  elevator, 
that,  during  the  first  forty  days  of  its  existence,  it  received 
six  hundred  thousand  bushels  of  grain.  It  only  needs  a  few 
more  Yankees  along  the  St.  Louis  levee  to  apply  similar 
devices  to  the  "handling"  of  other  merchandise,  and  abolish 
the  mules  and  their  noisy  drivers. 

Twenty-eight  years  ago,  Charles  Dickens  landed  upon  this 
levee,  and  was  driven  up  to  the  summit  of  it  into  the  old- 
est part  of  the  city,  which  he  thus  described :  — 

"  In  the  old  French  portion  of  the  town,  the  thoroughfares  are 
narrow  and  crooked,  and  some  of  the  houses  are  very  quaint  and 
picturesque,  —  being  built  of  wood,  with  tumble-down  galleries 
before  the  windows,  approachable  by  stairs,  or  rather  ladders,  from 
the  street.  There  are  queer  little  barbers*  shops,  and  drinking- 
houses  too,  in  this  quarter ;  and  abundance  of  crazy  old  tenements 
with  blinking  casements,  such  as  may  be  seen  in  Flanders.  Some 
of  these  ancient  habitations,  with  high  garret  gable-windows  perk- 
ing into  the  roofs,  have  a  kind  of  French  shrug  about  them ; 
and,  being  lop-sided  with  age,  appear  to  hold  their  heads  askew 
besides,  as  if  they  were  grimacing  in  astonishment  at  the 
American  improvements." 

There  is  nothing  of  this  now  to  be  seen  in  St.  Louis, 
except  that  the  ancient  streets  along  the  river  are  narrower 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  619 

than  the  rest.     All  is  modern,  American,  Philadelphian,  — 
especially   Philadelphian.     No   daughter  is  more   like   her 
mother  than   St.  Louis   is  like  Philadelphia.     From   1775 
to  1800,  Philadelphia  was  the  chief  city  of  the  country,  to 
which  all  eyes  were  directed,  and  to  which  the  leaders  of 
the  nation  annually  repaired.     So  dazzling  was  this  plain 
and  staid  metropolis  to  the  eyes  of  Western  members  and 
merchants,  that,  in  laying  out  the  cities  of  the  West,  they 
could  not  but  copy  Philadelphia,  even  in  the  minutest  par- 
ticulars.    The  streets  of  Philadelphia  running  parallel  to  the 
river  are  numbered ;  so  are  those  of  St.  Louis,  Cincinnati, 
and  other  Western  towns.     The  cross-streets  of  Philadelphia 
were  named  after  the  trees,  plants,  and  bushes  that  grew 
upon   its  site,   such  as  Sycamore,  Vine,   Cherry,  Walnut, 
Chestnut,  Pine,  and  Spruce.     Accident  changed  some  of 
these  appellations  in  the  course  of  years,  so  that  we  find 
such  names  as  "  Race  "  and  "  Arch  "  mingled  with  those  of 
the  trees.     So  infatuated  were  the  Western  men  of  the  early 
day  with  the  charms  of  Philadelphia,  a  visit  to  which  must 
have  been  the  great  event  of  their  lives,  that  they  not  only 
named  their  streets  at  home  Sycamore  and  Chestnut,  but 
used   also   the    accidental   ones,  such  as   Race   and   Arch. 
Nearly  every  street  in  Nashville  has  a  Philadelphia  name. 
Half  the  streets  of  Cincinnati  have  Philadelphia  names.     In 
St.  Louis,   too,  we  are  reminded   of  the  Quaker  City  at 
every  turn,  both  in  the  names  and  the  aspect  of  the  streets. 
Those  old-fashioned,  square,  roomy  brick  mansions, — the 
habit  of  tipping   and   pointing  everything  with  marble,  — 
the  brick  pavements,  — the  chastened  splendor  of  the  newer 
residences, — the   absence   of  any   principal   thoroughfare, 
such  as  Broadway, — the  prodigious  extent  of  the  city  for 
its  population,  —  the  general  quiet  and  neatness,  —  all  call 
to  mind  comfortable  Philadelphia.    They  have  even  adopted, 


620  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

of  late,  the  mode  of  numbering  the  houses  practised  in  the 
Quaker  City,  —  the  system  which  makes  a  person  live  at 
1418  Washington  Street,  merely  because  his  house  is  the 
eighteenth  above  the  corner  of  Fourteenth  Street. 

St.  Louis  enjoys  the  tranquillity  which  strikes  every 
stranger  with  so  much  surprise,  because  nature  has  placed 
no  obstacle  in  the  way  of  its  growth  in  any  direction,  and 
therefore  there  is  no  crowded  thoroughfare,  no  intense  busi- 
ness centre,  no  crammed  square  mile.  New  York  is  cramped 
in  a  long,  narrow  island,  between  two  wide  and  rapid  rivers, 
as  yet  unbridged.  Cincinnati,  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the 
Ohio,  encounters  an  almost  precipitous  hill,  four  hundred 
and  sixty  feet  high.  Chicago  had  to  be  raised  bodily  in  the 
air,  while  twelve  feet  of  earth  was  thrown  under  it  to  keep 
it  there.  Boston  cannot  grow  without  making  ground  to 
grow  upon.  But  fair  St.  Louis,  the  future  capital  of  the 
United  ^States,  perhaps,  and  of  the  civilization  of  the  Conti- 
nent, can  extend  itself  in  every  direction  back  from  the 
Mississippi,  without  meeting  any  formidable  obstacle.  The 
ground  is  high  enough  to  lift  the  city  above  the  highest 
floods  of  the  river,  but  nowhere  so  high  as  to  require 
expensive  grading.  The  prairie  behind  the  city  is  neither 
level  nor  inconveniently  undulating.  North  of  the  city 
there  are  some  blufis  of  slight  elevation,  which  have  been 
turned  to  excellent  account  as  the  sites  of  the  two  chief 
cemeteries.  The  highest  hijl,  however,  which  we  remember 
about  the  city,  is  that  lofty  Mound  on  the  bank  of  the  river, 
supposed  to  have  been  thrown  up  for  a  lookout  station  by 
the  Indians,  ages  ago,  from  which  St.  Louis  derives  its  name 
of  the  w  Mound  City."  It  was  with  a  cutting  pang  of  regret 
that  we  observed  the  partial  destruction  of  this  most  curious 
monument  of  the  past,  and  heard  of  the  supposed  necessity 
for  its  removal.  We  could  not  see  the  necessity.  Though 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  621 

St.  Louis  should  grow  to  be  a  greater  and  more  imperial 
city  than  Rome  (which  it  may) ,  the  time  will  never  come 
when  that  Mound,  if  perfectly  preserved,  would  not  be  one 
of  its  most  interesting  objects.  It  was  originally,  and  could 
easily  be  again,  a  well-shaped  mound,  about  as  high  and 
about  as  large  as  the  State  House  inBoston. 

There  being  no  hinderance  to  the  natural  growth  of  the 
city,  it  has  arranged  itself  in  a  natural  manner.  Along  the 
river,  as  far  back  as  Third  Street,  the  wholesale  business 
of  the  town  is  done.  Here  are  rows  of  tall  brick  stores  and 
warehouses ;  here  are  the  post-office,  the  exchange,  the 
court-house;  here  are  the  mills  and  the  factories,  which 
must  be  near  the  river.  All  the  bustle  and  clatter  of  the 
place  are  confined  to  these  three  or  four  streets  nearest 
the  water,  and  to  the  streets  crossing  them,  —  a  strip  of 
the  town  three  miles  long  and  a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide. 
Fourth  Street  contains  the  principal  retail  stores,  many  of 
which  are  on  the  scale  of  Broadway.  Here  the  ladies  of  St. 
Louis  replenish  at  once  and  exhibit  their  charms,  flitting 
from  store  to  store.  Fifth  Street  is  also  a  street  of  retail 
business  ;  but  beyond  that  line  the  city  presents  little  but  a 
vast  extent  of  residences,  churches,  public  institutions,  and 
vacant  lots,  —  these  last  being  so  numerous  that  the  town 
could  double  its  population  without  taking  in  much  more  of 
the  prairie.  From  the  cupola  of  the  court-house,  the  city 
appears  an  illimitable  expanse  of  brick  houses,  covered 
always  with  a  light  smoke  from  forty  thousand  fires  of 
bituminous  coal.  The  two  principal  hotels  are  the  largest 
in  the  United  States,  and  among  the  best.  The  nearness  of 
the  city  to  the  wilderness  and  the  uninhabited  prairie  fills 
the  markets  with  game.  Venison  is  cheaper  than  mutton ; 
wild  turkeys,  than  tame.  The  markets  of  St.  Louis  proba- 
bly furnish  a  greater  variety  and  profusion  of  delicious  food 


622  TEITTMPHS   OF  ENTEKPKISE. 

than  any  others  in  the  world,  and  the  art  of  cookery  seems 
never  to  have  been  lost  there. 

The  resemblance  of  this  highly  favored  city  to  Philadelphia 
is  only  external.  It  has  a  character  of  its  own,  to  which 
many  elements  have  contributed,  and  which  many  influences 
have  modified.  The  ball-clubs,  playing  in  the  fields  on 
Sunday  afternoons,  the  billiard-rooms  open  on  Sunday,  the 
great  number  of  assemblies,  balls,  and  parties,  the  existence 
of  five  elegant  and  expensively  sustained  theatres  in  a  town 
of  two  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  the  closing 
of  all  the  stores  by  sunset  in  winter,  and  before  sunset  in 
summer,  and  an  indefinable  something  in  the  tone  and  air 
of  the  people,  notify  the  stranger  that  he  is  in  a  place  which 
was  not  the  work  exclusively  of  the  Puritan,  nor  even  of  the 
Protestant.  It  is,  indeed,  a  town  of  highly  composite  char- 
acter. The  old  and  wealthy  families,  descendants  of  the 
original  French  settlers,  still  speaking  the  French  language 
and  maintaining  French  customs,  give  to  the  place  something 
of  the  style  of  New  Orleans.  As  the  chief  city  of  a  State 
that  shared,  and  deliberately  chose  to  share,  the  curse  of 
slavery,  it  has  much  of  the  languor  and  carelessness  induced 
by  the  habit  of  being  served  by  slaves.  The  negro,  too,  has 
imparted  his  accent  to  the  tongue  of  the  people.  Nearly 
one  half  of  the  population  being  Catholic,  and  the  Catholic 
Church  being  by  far  the  wealthiest  denomination  of  the 
place,  and  much  the  most  active,  enterprising,  and  wise,  the 
civilization  of  the  town  is  essentially  Catholic ;  and  even 
the  imitative  negroes  turn  out  on  Sundays  and  play  matches 
of  base-ball  in  costume.  The  city  being  midway  between 
the  Northern  Lakes  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  offering 
opportunities  to  men  of  enterprise,  has  attracted  a  few 
thousands  of  Northern  people,  who  have  been,  and  are  now, 
a  powerful  propelling  force  in  St.  Louis  and  in  the  wondrous 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  623 

o , 

State  of  Missouri.  Add  to  these  various  elements  sixty 
thousand  Germans,  whom  the  Secessionists  of  St.  Louis 
compliment  with  the  title  of  the  "  Damned  Dutch,"  —  utter- 
ing the  words  with  that  ferocious  emphasis  which  they 
usually  reserve  exclusively  for  the  "Damned  Yankees." 
Our  placid  and  good-natured  German  friends  are  not  apt  to 
excite  the  ire  of  their  fellow-citizens  ;  but  at  St.  Louis  they 
have  contrived  to  make  themselves  most  intensely  abhorred 
by  the  "aristocracy  "  of  the  place,  nine  in  ten  of  whom  were 
Secessionists.  Reason :  it  was  the  loyal  and  democratic 
Germans,  who,  in  1861,  saved  the  city  from  falling  into  the 
hands  of  the  Rebels,  and  it  is  the  Germans  who,  to-day, 
constitute  the  strength  of  the  United  States  in  the  State  of 
Missouri.  Let  us  drink,  at  all  future  Union  banquets, 
to  the  "Damned  Dutch  of  St.  Louis,"  for  truly  we  owe 
them  honor  and  gratitude. 

The  many  evidences  which  meet  the  eye,  in  this  city,  of 
solid  and  ancient  wealth,  are  a  constant  marvel  to  visitors 
accustomed  to  the  recentness  of  other  Western  cities.  How 
was  the  money  gained  which  built  those  hundred-thousand 
dollar  residences,  these  numerous  and  spacious  churches, 
colleges,  convents,  hospitals,  and  filled  them  with  pictures, 
books,  and  apparatus?  The  capital  which  has  created, 
renewed,  and  adorned  this  city  was  gained  here,  upon  the 
spot,  by  her  own  people,  not  borrowed  from  abroad. 

St.  Louis  is  just  one  hundred  and  four  years  old.  In  the 
summer  of  1763,  Pierre  Laclede  Liguest,  a  vigorous  and 
enterprising  Frenchman,  led  from  New  Orleans  a  large  party 
of  French  trappers  and  traders,  for  the  purpose  of  founding, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri,  a  depot  for 
the  furs  of  the  vast  region  watered  by  those  rivers.  In 
December,  after  five  months  of  toil,  he  saw  the  mouth  of  the 
muddy  Missouri,  but  preferred  for  the  site  of  his  settlement 


624  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  fine  bend  of  the  Mississippi,  twenty  miles  below,  which 
he  had  observed  on  his  way  up.  Landing  there,  he  marked 
the  spot  by  "  blazing  "  some  of  the  trees,  and,  in  the  follow- 
ing February,  sent,  from  his  winter  quarters  below,  a  party 
of  thirty  young  fellows  to  build  sheds  and  cabins  for  the 
settlement.  The  15th  of  February,  1764,  the  day  on  which 
this  little  band  landed,  was  the  birthday  of  St.  Louis.  In 
the  course  of  the  year,  the  main  body  of  adventurers  arrived, 
the  Indians  were  conciliated,  cabins  of  upright  poles  were 
built,  a  little  corn,  was  planted,  trade  was  begun,  and  the 
settlement  fairly  established. 

A  Frenchman  was  a  popular  personage  with  the  Indians 
in  those  days.  He  had  no  conscientious  scruples  against 
taking  a  squaw ;  and  his  religion  had  much  in  it  that  was 
imposing  to  the  savage  mind.  There  was  usually  a  fiddle 
in  French  settlements,  and  it  was  not  idle  on  festive  days. 
The  Frenchman  of  that  day  had  not  familiarized  his  mind 
with  the  history  of  Joshua,  and  it  did  not  give  him  much 
concern  to  know  that  the  Indians  were  heathen.  He  took 
the  business  of  settling  the  new  country  lightly,  and  accom- 
modated himself  to  the  wild  life  of  the  prairie  and  the  river, 
instead  of  attempting  to  subdue  them,  and  found  upon  them 
a  Christian  state,  "  to  the  glory  of  God."  He  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  build  a  good,  solid  log-house,  such  as  the 
men  of  our  race  built,  but  was  content  to  stick  poles  in  the 
ground,  and  cover  the  roof  with  bark  and  skins,  —  a  slight 
improvement  upon  the  wigwam.  Never,  never  would  those 
gay  and  pleasant  Frenchmen  have  conquered  the  continent 
from  savage  man  and  savage  nature  ;  but  they  got  along  very 
peaceably  with  the  Indians,  had  a  dance  on  Sunday  after- 
noons, and  made  the  best  of  their  lot.  It  is  quite  true,  as 
the  good  people  of  St.  Louis  often  say,  that,  if  the  English 
had  settled  St.  Louis,  there  would  have  been  massacres  and 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  625 

wars  without  end.  Yes ;  the  white  men  who  do  not  hate 
and  exterminate  Indians,  the  white  men  who  can  find  solace 
in  the  arms  of  squaws,  and  build  wigwams  instead  of  houses, 
may  possess  delightful  qualities  of  head  and  heart,  but  they 
arc  not  the  men  who  found  empires. 

European  politics,  strange  to  say,  had  a  powerful  influence 
upon  this  little  settlement  of  fur-traders.  The  peace  of 
1763  gave  all  the  country  east  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  Eng- 
lish, As  soon  as  tidings  of  this  dreadful  event  reached  the 
Frenchmen  who  had  settled  upon  the  Illinois,  they  made 
haste  to  remove  to  St.  Louis,  so  as  to  avoid  the  infamy  of 
living  under  the  rule  of  their  "  natural  enemy."  No  sooner 
had  they  arrived,  than  news  still  more  terrible  reached  them  : 
Louis  XV.  had  ceded  all  his  possessions  west  of  the  Missis- 
sippi to  Spain !  For  the  next  thirty  years  the  village  was 
an  outpost  of  Spanish  Louisiana,  in  whose  broad  extent  no 
one  could  own  land  who  was  not  a  Catholic.  The  French- 
men submitted  to  the  easy  sway  of  the  Spanish  commandant, 
and  the  settlement  slowly  increased  in  numbers  and  wealth. 
To  go  to  New  Orleans  and  return  was  a  voyage  of  ten 
months.  Furs,  lead,  and  salt  were  sent  down  the  river  in 
barges ;  which,  returning  in  the  following  year,  brought 
back  the  beads,  tomahawks,  and  trash  coveted  by  the  In- 
dians, as  well  as  the  few  articles  required  by  the  settlers. 
As  the  village  grew,  the  range  of  its  busines  extended,  and 
parties  of  trappers  and  of  traders  ascended  the  Missouri,  and 
laid  its  upper  waters  under  contribution.  From  the  Missis- 
sippi to  the  Pacific,  there  was  a  territory  two  thousand  miles 
broad,  all  alive  with  Indians,  with  buffalo,  beaver,  deer, 
bears,  and  every  kind  of  game.  From  1764  down  to  the 
year  1815,  when  the  first  steamboat  ascended  the  river,  St. 
Louis  gained  the  chief  part  of  its  livelihood  by  hunting,  trap- 
ping, and  trading  over  that  wondrous,  illimitable  park,  of 


626  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

which  it  was  the  principal  entrance.  There  was  no  fur-pro- 
ducing region,  between  the  river  and  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
which  was  not  embraced  in  the  system  of  which  St.  Louis 
was  the  controlling  power.  St.  Louis  was  the  metropolis  of 
the  hunting-shirt. 

The  great  event  in  the  history  of  St.  Louis  was  its  trans- 
fer, with  all  that  was  once  called  Louisiana,  to  the  United 
States  This  occurred  in  1804,  forty  years  after  Pierre 
Laclede  Liguest  had  blazed  the  trees  on  the  site  of  St.  Louis. 
The  entire  province  of  "  Upper  Louisiana  "  then  contained 
nine  thousand  and  twenty  whites,  and  one  thousand  three 
hundred  and  twenty  blacks.  St  Louis  consisted  of  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  houses,  nearly  all  of  which  were  one-story 
cabins  made  of  upright  hewn  logs,  roofed  with  shingles.  Many 
of  the  inhabitants  had  married  squaws,  and  some  of  the 
trappers  had  an  Indian  wife  in  the  town,  and  another  in  the 
hunting-grounds.  On  one  occasion,  a  Frenchman  and  his 
Indian  wife  presented  their  eight  children  for  baptism  all  at 
once.  The  old  records  contain  various  indications  that,  in 
this  French  village  of  St.  Louis,  neither  the  wife  nor  the 
community  saw  anything  very  censurable  in  a  married  man 
having  illegitimate  children.  There  is  a  joint  will,  for  exam- 
ple, in  the  archives,  in  which  husband  and  wife  express  the 
utmost  fondness  for  one  another,  and  beg  to  be  buried  as 
near  one  another  as  possible.  The  clause  following  these 
aifectionate  expressions  bequeaths  five  thousand  francs  to 
an  illegitimate  daughter  of  the  fond  and  beloved  husband. 
There  was  one  Catholic  church  in  the  place,  built  of  logs ; 
of  course,  no  other  than  a  Catholic  church  would  have  been 
permitted  by  the  Spanish  bigots  who  ruled  the  province.  The 
people  were  gay,  good-humored,  and  polite,  but  totally  des- 
titute of  the  force,  the  spirit,  the  ambition,  the  enterprise, 
which  made  the  people  of  cold  and  barren  New  England  fish 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  627 

for  cod  off  Newfoundland,  and  open  a  profitable  commerce 
with  the  West  Indies,  while  they  were  still  warring  with  the 
Indians.  A  St.  Louis  merchant  of  1790  was  a  man  who,  in 
a  corner  of  his  cabin,  had  a  large  chest,  which  contained  a 
few  pounds  of  powder  and  shot,  a  few  knives  and  hatchets, 
a  little  red  paint,  two  or  three  rifles,  some  hunting-shirts  of 
buckskin,  a  few  tin  cups  and  iron  pots,  and  perhaps  a  little 
tea,  coffee,  sugar,  and  spice.  There  was  no  post-office,  no 
ferry  over  the  river,  no  newspaper.  No  one  could  post  a 
bill  in  the  town  for  a  lost  horse  without  a  permit  from  the 
Governor ;  no  Protestant  could  own  a  lot.  But,  as  we  have 
before  observed,  the  people  enjoyed  existence  in  their  way. 
There  was  a  pleasant,  social  life  in  the  place.  On  occasions 
of  festivity,  each  family  brought  its  quota  of  provisions,  paid 
its  share  of  the  fiddler's  fee,  came  together  in  some  conven- 
ient place,  and  danced  till  the  sun  went  down.  And  thus 
they  would  have  lived  and  danced  till  the  present  hour,  but 
for  the  cession  of  the  province  to  the  United  States. 

That  glorious  event  changed  everything.  See  how  the 
system  of  freedom  works  when  it  supplants  the  system  of 
restriction.  The  post-office  was,  of  course,  immediately 
established.  The  laws  forbidding  Protestant  worship,  and 
requiring  owners  of  land  to  profess  the  Catholic  faith,  being 
abolished,  vigorous  men  (not  many,  but  enough  for  pro- 
pelling force)  moved  in  from  the  East  and  South,  and  began 
the  work  of  creating  what  we  now  call  St.  Louis.  In  1808, 
there  was  a  newspaper.  In  1809,  there  were  fire-companies. 
In  1810,  there  were  road-masters,  who  had  power  to  compel 
the  requisite  labor  on  the  highways.  In  1811,  there  were 
two  schools  in  the  town,  one  French  and  one  English.  In 
the  same  year  a  market  was  built ;  and  already  the  streets 
had  changed  their  names  from  La  Hue  Prmcipale,  La 
Rue  Royale,  La  Rue  des  Granges,  to  such  as  Walnut  and 


628  TRIUMPHS    OF    ENTERPRISE. 

Chestnut;  and  La  Place  d'Armes  had  also  become  plain 
Centre  Square. 

In  1812,  by  the  formation  of  the  great  Missouri  Fur  Com- 
pany, the  power  of  combined  capital  and  labor  was  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  hitherto  wild,  precarious  business  of  col- 
lecting furs,  and  expeditions  were  sent  out  upon  a  scale  and 
with  resources  that  insured  success.  The  trappers  and  hun- 
ters were  organized,  disciplined,  and  directed  by  able  men, 
who  could  stay  at  home  and  form  part  of  a  stable  commu- 
nity. The  lead-mines  began  to  be  worked  to  better  advantage 
on  a  larger  scale.  Above  all,  agriculture,  which  the  French 
settlers  had  only  regarded  as  a  means  of  obtaining  food, 
assumed  increasing  importance.  In  1815,  the  era  of  the 
steamboat  began. 

But  though  there  was  enough  vigorous  brain  in  the  town, 
after  the  cession,  to  give  it  impetus  and  organization,  there 
was  not  enough  to  prevent  its  falling  into  an  error  that 
retarded  its  progress  for  forty-five  years.  In  1820,  after  a 
long  and  most  animated  discussion,  St.  Louis  cast  its  vote 
for  slavery,  and  led  Missouri  to  the  same  decision.  The 
population  then  was  4,928.  In  1830,  it  had  increased  to 
5,852  I  An  increase  of  924  inhabitants  in  ten  years !  If 
Missouri  had  chosen  the  better  part  in  1820,  St.  Louis 
would  at  this  moment  be  a  city  of  a  million  inhabitants,  and 
Missouri  a  State  of  four  millions. 

The  rapid  growth  of  St.  Louis  dates  from  1833,  when  the 
prairie  world  began  to  attract  the  attention  of  emigrants. 
Every  family  that  settled  upon  the  banks  of  the  Missouri, 
the  Mississippi,  or  upon  their  tributaries,  contributed  its 
quota  of  business  to  a  city  which  is  the  natural  capital  of 
the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  which  is  the  natural  centre  of 
the  great  steamboat  interest  of  all  that  wonderful  system 
of  rivers.  From  1830  to  1860,  the  population  of  St.  Louis 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  629 

trebled  every  ten  years,  and,  from  being  the  narrow  and 
ill-favored  town  described  by  Charles  Dickens,  expanded 
into  the  spacious,  elegant,  tranquil,  and  solid  metropolis  we 
find  it  now. 

Who  can  describe  how  bitterly  St.  Louis  expiated,  during 
the  Rebellion,  the  mistake  of  1820?  The  wealth,  the  social 
influence,  the  planting  interest,  and  much  of  the  cultivated 
brain  of  the  city  and  the  State,  were  in  the  fullest  sympathy 
with  the  Secessionists.  The  governor  of  the  State  was  a 
Secessionist,  and  nearly  every  other  man  whose  official  posi- 
tion would  render  him  important  in  a  crisis.  In  all  Missouri 
there  were  in  1860  about  20,000  Republicans,  but  nowhere 
in  the  State  was  there  any  considerable  body  of  them  in 
one  place,  except  at  St.  Louis,  among  the  "Damned  Dutch." 
The  United  States  Arsenal  in  the  city,  filled  with  arms  and 
ammunition,  was  commanded  by  an  officer  bound  to  the 
South  by  every  tie  that  usually  influences  men.  And  yet 
the  arsenal  and  the  city  were  promptly  saved  from  the 
clutch  of  treason. 

We  talk  of  erecting  monuments  to  the  saviours  ot  the 
country,  but  we  shall  never  erect  a  monument  to  its  real 
saviours, — the  Secessionists  themselves,  whose  madness 
came  so  often  to  the  rescue  of  the  gasping  Union.  If  they 
had  only  been,  at  critical  moments,  a  little  less  foolish,  a 
little  less  blindly  arrogant,  ignorant,  cruel,  or  ridiculous, — 
just  a  little,  —  how  could  we,  with  so  many  enemies  among 
us,  and  with  every  power  in  Christendom  except  one  on 
their  side, — how  could  we  have  put  them  down?  They 
lost  St.  Louis  by  their  headlong  precipitation.  When  Frank 
Blair  and  his  friends  returned  from  nominating  Mr.  Lincoln 
at  the  Chicago  Convention  of  1860,  a  ratification  meeting 
was  held  at  St.  Louis,  which  was  assailed  and  broken  up  by 
a  mob  of  "  Democrats."  Some  of  the  speakers  were  struck 


630  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

with  stones,  all  were '  insulted  by  blasphemous  yells  and 
hellish  imprecations.  That  riot  saved  St.  Louis,  for  it  led 
to  the  formation  of  the  Wide- Awake  Club,  which  issued, 
in  due  time,  in  sixty-six  regiments  of  loyal  Missouri  vol- 
unteers. Eeaders  remember  the  Wide-A wakes  of  1860. 
With  us,  they  were  only  the  decoration  of  the  "  campaign," 
the  material  of  which  its  torchlight  processions  were  com- 
posed ;  but  at  St.  Louis  they  were  necessary  for  the  main- 
tenance of  freedom  and  order.  They  attended  every 
Republican  meeting,  armed  with  a  loaded  club  and  a  flaming 
lamp  of  camphene,  and  assailed  disturbers  of  the  peace  with 
club  and  fire.  Disbanded  after  the  election,  they  reorgan- 
ized in  the  following  February,  when  traitors  began  to  cast 
inquiring  eyes  upon  the  arsenal ;  but  now  they  appeared  in 
another  guise,  as  regiments  of  militia,  armed  through  the 
exertions  of  Frank  Blair,  and  led,  at  length,  by  that  alert 
and  valiant  soldier,  Nathaniel  Lyon.  These  were  the  men 
who  saved  the  arsenal,  broke  up  the  traitors'  camp  in  the 
suburbs,  and  kept  the  enemy's  troops  always  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  city. 

We  in  the  North  can  but  faintly  realize  the  desolation  and 
misery  of  the  war  in  Missouri  and  St.  Louis.  The  blockade 
of  the  river  reduced  the  whole  business  of  the  city  to  about 
one  third  its  former  amount ;  and  yet  nothing  could  pre- 
vent refugees  from  the  seat  of  war  from  seeking  safety  and 
sustenance  in  the  impoverished  town.  Families  were  terri- 
bly divided.  Children  witnessed  daily  the  horrid  spectacle 
of  their  parents  fiercely  quarrelling  over  the  news  of  the 
morning,  each  denouncing  what  the  other  held  sacred,  and 
vaunting  what  the  other  despised.  In  the  back  counties, 
whole  regions  were  absolutely  depopulated.  "No  quarter  !" 
was  the  word  on  both  sides.  "In  counties,"  says  a  well- 
informed  writer,  "  where  the  Rebels  had  control,  no  Union 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  631 

man  dared  to  remain ;  in  counties  where  Union  men  were 
dominant,  no  Rebel  was  permitted  to  reside.  As  the  wave 
of  war  flowed  or  ebbed  across  the  State,  it  carried  on  its 
surface  the  inhabitants  in  one  direction  or  the  other.  As  the 
Rebel  armies  advanced,  Union  citizens  retired,  taking  with 
them  their  families  and  household  goods  ;  when  the  enemy 
retrograded,  followed  up  by  the  Federal  armies,  the  Union 
men  returned,  and  the  Rebel  families  receded.  The  whole 
population  was  at  war.  There  was  no  neutrality,  and  could 
be  none.  In  this  way  those  sections  of  the  State  which 
were  debatable  ground  became  uninhabitable,  were  depop- 
ulated, and  turned  into  a  wilderness." 

During  the  last  two  years  of  the  war,  .the  prodigious 
expenditures  of  the  government  in  the  Southwest  enriched 
many  citizens  of  St.  Louis,  and  employed  some  thousands 
of  them.  It  is,  nevertheless,  a  decisive  proof  of  the  solidity 
of  the  business  men  of  the  city,  that  they  bore  the  long 
stagnation  so  well,  and  came  out  of  the  war  generally  pre- 
pared to  resume  business  at  the  point  and  on  the  scale  at 
which  the  interruption  occurred.  St.  Louis  is,  in  every 
sense,  herself  again,  with  the  absence  of  the  black  incubus 
that  weighed  her  down.  All  is  hopefulness  and  energy  there 
now.  It  is  but  six  years  since  the  war  ended,  and  yet  the. 
city  did  more  business  in  1870  than  in  any  other  year  of  its 
existence. 

The  war  inflicted  wounds  which  are  not  so  easily  healed. 
We  heard  much  in  St.  Louis  of  the  ill-temper  of  the  defeated 
Secessionists ;  but  they  seemed  to  us  more  sad  than  bitter, 
more  anxious  than  resentful.  If,  in  their  intercourse  with 
strangers,  they  were  reserved,  it  appeared  to  be  because  the 
only  topic  upon  which  they  have  been  accustomed  to  con- 
verse is  utterly  exhausted.  And  really,  after  thirty  years 
of  talk,  and  four  of  war,  they  may  well  pause,  fatigued,  and 

40 


632  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

try  a  little  meditation.  In  mingling  with  those  polite  and 
reticent  men,  we  could  feel  for  them  nothing  but  good-will. 
We  could  not  but  remember  that  for  thirty  years  they  had 
been  severed,  intellectually  and  morally,  from  the  rest  of  the 
human  race,  and  had  not  shared  in  the  new  light  and  better 
feeling  of  recent  times.  We  could  not  but  remember,  that 
during  the  war,  they  were  as  sure  that  they  were  right  as 
we  were  sure  that  we  were  right.  We  could  not  but 
remember  that  they  dared  more,  sacrificed  more,  suffered 
more  than  we  did. 

And  then  these  Southern  brethren  of  ours  are,  in  all  intel- 
lectual matters,  such  children,  that  it  is  impossible,  while 
you  are  among  them,  to  feel  otherwise  than  tenderly  towards 
them.  Judging  from  the  Southern  literature  that  may  be 
found  in  great  variety  on  the  counters  of  St.  Louis  book- 
stores, we  should  say  that  the  reading  people  of  the  South 
are  still  subsisting  upon  the  novels  and  poems  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  They  appear  to  have  taken  Scott  seriously,  as 
though  Sir  Walter  had  really  thought  Ivanhoe  was  a  more 
admirable  personage  than  James  Watt,  and  wanted  people 
to  stop  making  steam-engines  and  go  back  to  chivalry !  Let 
the  middle-aged  reader  recall  the  time-when  he  read  Scott's 
novels  with  the  passion  so  proper  and  natural  to  youth,  then 
let  him  endeavor  ^to  imagine  what  'sort  of  person  he  would 
now  be  if  he  had  read  nothing  else  since ;  and  he  will  be 
able  to  form  a  conception  of  the  kind  of  people  who  litter 
the  bookstores  of  St.  Louis  with  "  Cavalier  "  newspapers 
and  "Southern  Lyrics."  Nothing  is  so  amusing  as  the 
gravity,  nay,  the  solemnity,  with  which  they  treat  the  most 
trivial  topics.  While  we  were  at  St.  Louis,  a  band  of  negro 
minstrels  performed  a  burlesque  of  a  "  tournament "  which 
had  been  recently  held  in  the  city.  One  of  these  amiable 
writers  discoursed  on  this  topic  in  a  manner  to  draw  tears. 


THE   CITY  OF  ST.    LOUIS.  633 

"  This  sooty  band  of  harmonists,  who  -have  stolen  their  com- 
plexion from  the  negro  and  their  character  from  the  same  individ- 
ual,— if,  indeed,  they  have  any,  —  are  engaged  just  now  in 
entertaining  the  public  with  a  burlesque  of  the  Tournament  lately 
held  at  the  Fair  Grounds.  These  mountebanks,  emboldened  by 
the  laugh  of  the  crowd,  and  having  no  knowledge  of  the  proprie- 
ties of  social  life  to  restrain  them,  have  presumed  to  push  their 
insolence  beyond  all  limit  of  reason  or  decency,  and  to  present  the 
actions  of  private  persons  in  scenes  of  the  broadest  caricature 
upon  the  stage.  They  have  gone  further,  and  made,  as  well,  the 
incidents  and  personages  of  the  social  gathering  that  followed 
that  event  the  subject  of  their  noisy  mirth  and  coarse  buffoon- 
ery." 

Imagine  two  columns  of  this  eloquence,  — all  on  the  sub- 
ject of  a  little  piece  of  harmless  fun  by  a  "  sooty  band  of 
harmonists."  A  heap  of  such  clippings  lies  before  us,  cut 
from  all  sorts  of  periodicals ;  but  in  the  heap  there  are  one 
or  two  that  contain  a  gleam  of  sense.  The  following  is 
more  than  a  gleam :  it  is  a  burst  of  light :  it  solves  the  whole 
problem  of  reconstruction.  The  conversation  is  supposed  to 
have  taken  place  on  board  of  a  Red  River  steamboat,  among 
a  group  of  Arkansas  planters  :  — 

"  First  Planter,  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  sell  half  of  my 
farm,  and  I  shall  sell  it  to  a  Yankee, 

"Second  Planter.  You  are  joking;  You  couldn't  endure  a 
Yankee  neighbor. 

"  First  Planter.  No,  I  am  not  joking ;  I  swear  I  am  in  earn- 
est. I  want  an  enterprising  Yankee  neighbor.  I  think  he  can 
teach  me  a  good  many  things,  and  that  I  can  teach  him  a  good 
many  things,  and  that  together  we  can  double  the  value  of  my 
lands,  and  improve  the  condition  of  my  county.  We  haven't  a 
school  in  the  county,  —  not  one.  We  have  good  water  power,  but 
no  machinery.  Our  lands  are  as  rich  as  the  banks  of  the  Nile, 
but  they  will  not  bring  to-day  twenty-five  dollars  an  acre,  and  we 


634  TKIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPEISE. 

are  head  over  ears  in  debt.  Gentlemen,  we  need  a  Yankee  element 
to  develop  Arkansas. 

"  Second  Planter.    But  his  politics. 

"  First  Planter.  Damn  politics !  We  have  followed  abstrac- 
tions until  we  are  wellnigh  ruined." 

We  greatly  fear  that  this  conversation  originated  in  the  in- 
ventive mind  of  a  Yankee ;  but  its  publication  in  a  Southern 
newspaper  was  something.  Would  that  it  could  be  "  cut  out " 
and  stuck  up  in  every  Southern  post-office  I  At  present  the 
Yankee  is  usually  spoken  of  in  the  South  as  per  specimen, 
copied  from  the  opening  lines  of  "The  Saint's  Jubilee,  a  Sat- 
ire,' published  at  St.  Louis  :  — 

"  To  Saints  and  Pilgrims  now  we  bawl, 
Who  worship  in  old  Fan'il  Hall,  — 
Old  Fan'il  Hall,  that  glorious  spot, 
Where  saints  so  oft  blow  cold  and  hot, 
And  launch  abroad  their  wordy  thunder 
To  fill  th'  astonished  world  with  w.onder ; 
The  '  cradle '  this  of  revolution, 
From  whence  doth  spring  such  wild  confusion, 
That  saints  are  sometimes  in  a  pother, 
To  know  if  this  is  that  or  father." 

Consider  the  feelings  of  a  people  saturated  with  Scott, 
and  regarding  Hudibras  as  a  classic  model,  at  being  "  con- 
quered," as  they  delight  to  term  it,  by  the  saints  of  Faneuil 
Hall. 

One  of  the  many  surprises  of  St.  Louis  is  the  smallness  of 
the  negro  population,  —  not  more  than  three  thousand  in  all. 
At  Chicago  and  other  Northern  cities,  the  waiters  at  the 
hotels  are  generally  colored  men;  at  St.  Louis,  generally 
white.  Most  of  the  coachmen,  grooms,  porters,  and  female 
servants  are  white.  Along  the  levee  there  is  a  fringe  of 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  €35 

negroes,  loading  and  unloading  the  steamboats,  and  negroes 
are  employed  in  other  rough  work ;  but  they  play  as  uncon- 
spicuous  a  part  in  the  life  of  the  city,  as  in  that  of  Boston 
or  New  York.  There  is  a  vast  difference  between  a  Chicago 
negro  and  a  St.  Louis  negro.  At  St.  Louis  the  shadow  of 
slavery  rests  still  upon  their  countenances,  and  cows  their 
souls.  So  imitative  and  sympathetic  is  man,  that  the  negroes 
will  never  believe  much  in  themselves,  until  white  men 
believe  a  little  in  them ;  and  the  Southern  portion  of  the  St. 
Louis  people  are  still  very  far  from  this.  How  impossible 
to  convey  to  the  Northern  mind  the  faintest  idea  of  the  wild, 
incredulous,  speechless  amazement  of  the  Southern  woman 
on  being  informed  that  negroes  were  to  vote !  It  was  as 
though  a  Northern  lady  were  to  read  in  a  newspaper,  that 
rats  and  mice  were  to  be  counted  in  the  election  of  the  next 
President.  But  these  traits  of  immaturity  will  disappear, — 
are  disappearing,  —  now  that  no  artificial  obstacle  exists  to 
the  free  growth  of  the  Southern  mind.  We  doubt  if  to-day 
one  hundred  disinterested  votes  could  be  obtained  in  St. 
Louis  for  the  reestablishment  of  slavery  in  Missouri. 

Has  the  reader  ever  taken  the  trouble  to  observe  what  a 
remarkable  piece  of  the  earth's  surface  this  State  of  Missouri 
is  ?  Surface,  indeed !  We  beg  pardon  ;  Missouri  goes  far 
enough  under  the  surface  to  furnish  mankind  with  one  hun- 
dred million  tons  of  coal  a  year  for  thirteen  hundred  years  ! 
Think  of  26,887  square  miles  of  coal-beds,  —  nearly  half  the 
State,  —  and  some  of  the  beds  fifteen  feet  thick.  With 
regard  to  iron,  it  is  not  necessary  to  penetrate  the  surface 
for  that.  They  have  iron  in  Missouri  by  the  mountain. 
Pilot  Knob,  581  feet  high,  and  containing  360  acres,  is  a 
mass  of  iron ;  and  Iron  Mountain,  six  miles  distant  from  it, 
is  228  feet  high,  covers  500  acres,  and  contains  230,000,000 
tons  of  ore,  without  counting  the  inexhaustible  supply  that 


636  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

may  reasonably  be  supposed  to  exist  below  the  level.  There 
is  enough  iron  lying  about  loose  in  that  region  for  a  double 
track  of  railroad  across  the  continent.  The  lead  districts  of 
Missouri  include  more  than  6,000  square  miles,  and  at  least 
five  hundred  "  points  "  where  it  is  known  that  lead  can  be 
profitably  worked.  In  fifteen  counties  there  is  copper,  and 
in  seven  of  these  counties  there  is  copper  enough  to  pay  for 
working  the  mines.  There  are  large  deposits  of  zinc  in  the 
State.  There  is  gold,  also,  which  does  not  yet  attract  much 
attention,  because  of  the  dazzling  stores  of  the  precious  metal 
farther  west.  In  short,  within  one  hundred  miles  of  St. 
Louis,  the  following  metals  and  minerals  are  found  in  quan- 
tities that  will  repay  working :  gold,  iron,  lead,  zinc,  copper, 
tin,  silver,  platina,  nickel,  emery,  cobalt,  coal,  limestone, 
granite,  pipe-clay,  fire-clay,  marble,  metallic  paints,  and  salt. 
The  State  contains  forty-five  million  acres  of  land.  Eight 
millions  of  these  acres  have  the  rich  soil  that  is  peculiarly 
suited  to  the  raising  of  hemp.  There  are  five  millions  of 
acres  among  the  best  in  -  the  world  for  the  grape.  Twenty 
million  acres  are  good  farming  lands,  adapted  to  the  ordinary 
crops  of  the  Northern  farmer.  Two  million  acres  are  mining 
lands.  Unlike  some  of  the  prairie  States,  Missouri  pos- 
sesses a  sufficiency  of  timber  land,  and  most  of  her  prairies 
are  of  the  rolling  variety. 

'We  have  often  tried  to  decide  the  great  question,  which 
of  the  States  of  the  Union  is  the  fittest  and  richest  dwelling- 
place  for  man.  It  is  easy  to  come  to  a  conclusion  on  the 
subject,  but  difficult  to  adhere  to  it.  Often,  while  sailing  on 
the  broad  and  brimming  Hudson,  and  thinking  of  the  various 
charms  and  advantages  of  the  State  through  which  it  flows, 
we  have  been  quite  certain  that  New  York  is  the  fairest  and 
noblest  province  of  the  earth.  In  this  opinion  we  remain 
fixed,  until  we  find  ourselves  surveying  the  outward  beauty, 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  637 

and  contemplating  the  hidden  wealth,  of  Pennsylvania.  Then 
we  throw  New  York  over,  and  assign  to  its  great  neighbor 
the  palm  of  superiority.  But,  anon,  we  are  lost  in  wonder 
at  the  unknown  but  inexhaustible  resources  of  Virginia,  its 
happy  situation,  its  favorable  climate,  the  tranquil  pictu- 
resqueness  of  its  winding  streams,  its  romantic  and  accessible 
mountains.  Then  we  give  Pennsylvania  the  go-by,  and 
yield  our  allegiance  to  Virginia.  In  the  same  way  we  have 
found  our  unstable  affections  straying  off  to  noble  Ohio, 
beautiful  Iowa,  bountiful  Illinois,  delightful  Tennessee, 
various  Minnesota,  —  each  of  which,  when  the  other  dear 
charmers  are  forgotten,  seems  the  unique  and  unapproach- 
ably lovely.  At  the  present  moment,  great  Missouri  has 
our  profoundest  homage.  There  is  nothing  which  man  needs, 
and  there  are  few  things  which  it  is  rational  for  him  to 
desire,  that  this  imperial  State  does  not  furnish  in  rich  abun- 
dance. There  is  grain  for  his  sustenance,  tobacco  for  his 
solace,  gold  for  his  decoration,  iron  for  his  use,  wine  for  his 
exhilaration,  cotton  and  wool  for  his  garments,  and  hemp  for 
his  morals.  Held  back  for  forty  years  by  slavery,  desolated 
for  four  years  by  civil  war,  it  has  gone  forward  since  the 
return  of  peace  by  strides  and  bounds. 

If  St.  Louis  were  nothing  more  than  the  chief  city  of  such 
a  State,  it  would  be  a  place  of  all  but  the  first  impor- 
tance. But,  it  is  far  more  than  that ;  it  is  the  centre  and 
natural  metropolis  of  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi.  Above 
it,  the  great  river  is  navigable  for  800  miles ;  below  it,  for 
1,345  miles.  Twenty  miles  above  the  city,  the  Missouri 
pours  in  its  turbid  flood,  navigable  to  a  point  nearly  three 
thousand  miles  from  St.  Louis.  Two  hundred  miles  below 
the  city  is  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  which  gives  St.  Louiy 
river  communication  with  Pittsburg,  twelve  hundred  miles 
distant,  and  with  the  oil  and  coal  regions  of  Pennsylvania, 


638  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

above  Pittsburg.  The  navigable  tributaries  of  the  Missis- 
sippi and  Missouri,  eleven  thousand  miles  in  length,  place 
within  reach  of  the  city  every  town  of  much  importance  in  a 
valley  of  twelve  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  destined  to 
contain  a  population  of  two  hundred  millions  of  pe6ple. 
Those  ship  canals  which  Chicago  is  so  set  upon  speedily 
creating,  will  give  St.  Louis  also  access  to  the  Great  Lakes, 
and  a  short  cut  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  A  thousand  miles  of 
railroad  in  the  State  connect  the  city  with  the  Western  sys- 
tem of  roads,  chief  among  whiph  is  the  railroad  to  the 
Pacific.  When  that  greatest  work  of  man  was  finished,  in 
1870,  St.  Louis — which  is  1,000  miles  from  New  York 
and  2,300  miles  from  San  Francisco  —  was  as  manifestly 
the  natural  capital  of  the  United  States  as  it  was  of  the 
richest  portion  of  it.  It  is  not,  in  a  geographical  sense, 
the  central  city ;  but  considering  the  superior  importance  to 
us  of  Europe  over  Asia,  and  other  obvious  facts,  it  is 
central  in  every  sense  except  the  geographical  one, — the 
centre  of  politics,  of  business,  and  of  distribution. 

There  is  always  a  certain  agreeable  freshness,  heartiness, 
and  simplicity  in  a  community  which  deals  chiefly  in  the 
natural  products  of  the  earth ;  and  this  is  one  reason  why 
it  is  so  pleasant  to  a  Northern  traveller  to  reside  for  a  while 
in  the  Southern  States.  He  feels  like  a  lawyer  out  in  the 
hay-fields,  or  like  city  children  in  the  country.  Agriculture 
is  there  conducted  on  a  scale  which  invests  it  with  a  dignity 
not  so  easily  discerned  in  a  region  of  little  farms,  each 
worked  by  one  poor,  anxious,  overtasked  man,  assisted  by 
one  poor,  anxious,  overtasked  woman.  St.  Louis,  from  the 
time  when  it  laid  the  foundation  of  its  fortune  in  the  fur 
trade,  has  always  been  a  depot  and  market  for  grain,  flour, 
hemp,  and  tobacco ;  and,  although  the  manufactures  of  the 
city  are  important  and  increasing,  St.  Louis  still  gains  the 


THE    CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  639 

chief  part  of  its  livelihood  by  dealing  in  natural  products. 
The  great  Exchange  room,  where  the  twenty-five  hundred 
ruling  business  men  of  the  place  daily  meet  for  an  hour  and 
a  half,  is  a  refreshing  scene  to  the  worn  slave  of  the  desk 
who  may  chance  to  witness  it.  Here,  along  the  sides  of  the 
long  room,  are  tables  covered  with  little  tin  pans,  containing 
samples  of  corn,  wheat  of  all  grades  and  colors,  flour,  meal, 
oats,  barley,  beans,  bran,  seeds,  apples,  dried  apples,  salt ; 
on  other  tables  are  hams,  samples  of  hemp,  wool,  and  cotton, 
bottles  of  coal  oil,  lard,  lard  oil,  lubricating  oil,  currying 
oil,  specimens  of  rope,  and  many  other  such  commodities. 
What  fine,  fresh,  hearty-looking  men  !  Here  are  the  millers, 
with  their  ruddy  faces  and  light-colored  clothes,  who  super- 
intended the  grinding  of  those  annual  million  barrels  of 
flour,  and  whose  honesty  and  good  sense  have  made  the  St. 
Louis  brands  the  favorites  in  all  the  flour  marts  of  the  coun- 
try. Here  are  the  buyers  of  grain,  each  in  his  accustomed 
place,  to  whom  come  sellers  bearing  pans  of  wheat,  which 
the  buyer  runs  his  hand  through,  asks  the  price  and  the 
quantity,  and  indicates,  by  a  shake  OP  a  nod  of  the  head, 
whether  he  takes  or  declines  it.  These  men  of  the  St.  Louis 
Exchange  do  not  know  as  much,  do  not  think  and  read  as 
much,  do  not  push  and  advertise  and  vaunt  as  much,  as 
those  who  frequent  the  Exchange  of  Chicago  ;  but  they  have 
that  something  about  them  which  makes  the  charm  of  the 
farmer  and  the  country  gentleman.  Evidently  they  take 
life  more  easily  than  their  rivals  farther  north.  Much  of 
their  talk  is  in  an  unknown  tongue.  When  they  are  speak- 
ing of  tobacco,  they  describe  the  varieties  of  that  article  in 
such  terms  as  the  following:  "scraps,"  "lugs,"  "factory 
lugs,"  "planters'  lugs,"  "medium  shipping  leaf,"  "choice 
manufacturing,"  "dark  fillers,"  "bright  fillers,"  "black  wrap- 
pers," "fancy  leaf."  We  must  not  omit  to  record  that  the 


640  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

standard  of  commercial  honor  has  always  been  high  at  St. 
Louis,  and  that  its  merchants  have  rather  inclined  to  an 
excess  of  caution  than  to  an  excess  of  enterprise.  As  the 
brand  of  "  St.  Louis  "  upon  a  barrel  of  flour  adds  to  its  com- 
mercial value,  so  the  name  of  St.  Louis  upon  a  merchant's 
card  facilitates  his  way  to  confidence  and  credit  in  other 
cities. 

What,  then,  of  the  reckless  steamboating  ?     St.  Louis  has 
at  least  the  candor  to  publish  every  year  a  catalogue  of  all 
the  steamers  and  barges  sunk,  burnt,  and  exploded  on  the 
rivers.     During  the  year  1866  the  explosions  were  seven  in 
number;    twenty-two    steamboats   were    burnt;    forty-nine 
were  sunk  and  lost ;  twelve  were  sunk  and  raised ;  twenty- 
nine  barges  were  sunk ;  —  one  hundred  and  nineteen  casual- 
ties in  all.     Judging  from  our  intercourse  with  the  manly 
and  agreeable  fellows  who  command  and  pilot  the  St.  Louis 
steamboats,  we  should  not  suppose  that  they  had  any  very 
decided  taste  for  being  blown  a  hundred  feet  in  the  air,  nor 
any  marked  inclination  to  have  their  property  and  credit 
submerged  in  the  thick  waters  of  the  Mississippi.     Such  is 
the  competition  among  owners  for  competent  pilots,  that  the 
best  pilots  now  command  seven  hundred  dollars  a  month, 
and  each  boat  must  have  two.     For  the  explosions  there  is 
no  excuse ;    for  the  conflagrations,  there  is  some ;  for  the 
sinkings,  there  is  enough.     A  Western  steamboat  is  as  com- 
bustible as  a  theatre ;  there  is  in  the  midst  of  it  a  raging 
volcano ;    and  the  whole  mass  of  fire  and  fuel  is  rushing 
through  the  air  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour.     One 
stray  spark,  unobserved  for  ten  minutes,  suffices  to  kindle  a 
blaze  which  nothing  can  quench  but  the  river's  rolling  flood. 
These  fires  can  be  prevented  only  by  a  systematic  and  sleep- 
less vigilance,  which  the  Southwestern  man  does  not  take  to 
easily.     But  learn  it  they  must  and  will. 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  641 

Recently,  they  have  introduced  upon  the  great  rivers  of 
the  West  the  tow-boat  and  barge  system,  as  we  have  it  upon 
the  Hudson.  Tow-boats  of  immense  power,  which  carry  no 
freight,  draw  after  them  and  around  them,  like  a  duck  sur- 
rounded by  her  family,  five,  ten,  or  fifteen  spacious  barges, 
loaded  with  grain,  cotton,  and  passengers.  On  arriving  at 
a  town,  the  fleet  stops  only  long  enough  to  let  go  one  barge, 
and  take  on  another.  Nor  is  there  any  stopping  for  fuel,  for 
the  tow-boat  is  large  enough  to  contain  a  supply  for  the  voy- 
age. Such  is  the  saving  of  time,  by  avoiding  hours'  delay 
at  each  of  the  principal  landings  and  the  frequent  stoppings 
for  fuel,  that  the  tow-boats,  with  ten  loaded  barges  attached 
to  them,  make  the  trip  from  St.  Louis  to  New  Orleans  in  six 
days,  which  is  just  the  time  usually  taken  by  the  fastest  pas- 
senger boats.  In  this  way  such  commodities  as  grain  can  be 
conveyed  in  bulk,  —  a  great  economy,  — and  the  voyage  on 
the  Mississippi  is  rendered- almost  as  safe  as  upon  the  Dela- 
ware. It  is  the  tow-boat,  in  the  van  of  the  floating  mass, 
that  incurs  most  of  the  perils  of  the  river,  and  all  those  of 
the  boiler.  The  system  is  a  prodigious  economy.  One  of 
those  large  passenger  boats  on  the  Mississippi  is  run  at  an 
expense  of  a  thousand  dollars  a  day,  and  it  wastes  half  its 
time  in  waiting  for  freight.  A  tow-boat  capable  of  towing 
ten  barges  expends  but  two  hundred  dollars  a  day,  and 
wastes  fewer  hours  than  a  passenger  boat  wastes  days. 

That  Mississippi  River,  dull  and  harmless  as  it  usually 
looks,  is  one  of  the  most  unmanageable  things  in  nature,  and 
supplies  the  towns  upon  its  banks  with  that  element  of  peril 
that  is  a  universal  concomitant  of  human  life.  It  never 
knows  its  own  mind  two  years  together,  and  rolls  about  in 
its  soft  bed  like  a  sick  hippopotamus.  One  year  it  floods  a 
town,  or  slices  off  a  few  acres  of  it ;  the  next,  it  threatens 
to  leave  it  and  seek  another  channel.  Even  St.  Louis, 


642  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

though  safe  from  floods,  has  been  obliged  to  use  considerable 
compulsion  to  keep  the  river  from  floundering  over  toward 
the  Illinois  shore,  and  leaving  the  levee  a  dry  joke  to  the 
Chicagonese  forever.  Every  ten  or  fifteen  years,  too,  the 
river  rises  high  enough  to  pour  in  at  the  front  doors  of 
the  stores  at  the  top  of  the  levee,  which  are  needlessly  near 
the  channel.  The  elders  of  the  town  remember  the  time 
when  the  flood  was  threatening,  and  Edwin  Forrest  was  act- 
ing, both  on  the  same  evening ;  and,  as  often  as  the  curtain 
went  down,  the  men  would  rush  out  of  doors  to  hear  the  last 
news  from  the  river,  and  when  the  play  was  over,  the  entire 
audience  hurried  pell-mell  to  the  levee  to  see  for  themselves 
whose  cellars  were  flooded,  and  into  whose  second-story 
windows  the  water  was  pouring. 

The  ice,  too,  is  a  thing  of  terror  at  St.  Louis.  It  does  no 
harm  while  it  is  forming,  nor  as  long  as  it  remains  firm.  On 
the  contrary,  it  furnishes  a  convenient  bridge,  over  which, 
for  a  month  sometimes,  the  heaviest  loads  are  safely  drawn. 
It  is  the  breaking  up  that  does  the  mischief.  Along  the 
gently  curving  edge  of  the  levee,  a  hundred  steamboats  have 
their  noses  in  the  sand,  and  their  hulls  fixed  aslant  in  the 
thickest  ice.  Ropes  and  cables  fasten  some  to  the  shore ; 
others,  for  experiment's  sake,  are  held  by  light  ropes,  or  by 
none.  In  the  middle  of  the  river  a  few  boats  are  anchored, 
—  also  as  an  experiment, —  and  others  line  the  opposite 
shore.  The  ice  gives  no  warning  of  the  coming  change, 
and,  by  degrees,  the  vigilance  of  the  thousands  who  have 
reason  to  contemplate  its  breaking  up  with  dread  is 
relaxed.  Suddenly,  when  no  one  is  thinking  of  the  river,  a 
voice  is  heard  crying,  "It  moves!" 

All  eyes  are  turned  to  the  ice.  It  is  a  horrid  circumstance 
of  the  breaking  up,  that,  when  the  ice  begins  to  go,  it  moves 
in  an  entire  mass,  so  slowly  and  so  silently  that,  for  several 


THE   CITY   OI    ST.    LOUIS.  643 

minutes,  no  inexperienced  person  can  discern  the  motion. 
The  boy  that  first  noticed  the  movement  of  the  ice  in  1866 
was  scolded  by  the  by-standers  for  making  a  false  alarm. 
As  soon  as  it  becomes  certain  that  the  ice  has  started,  the 
fire-bells  ring,  and  all  the  city  hurries  to  the  levee,  to  pre- 
vent or  witness  the  destruction  of  the  steamboats.  -  The 
broad  sheet  of  ice,  two  or  three  feet  thick,  as  it  glides  along, 
soon  begins  to  bring  a  fearful  strain  upon  the  line  of  boats. 
Something  must  give  way.  Nothing  can  stop  the  motion  of 
the  ice,  that  has  hundreds  of  miles  of  ice  behind  it,  pressing 
it  on.  Suddenly  the  silence  is  broken ;  the  ice  cracks : 
fissures  yawn ;  some  boats  are  crushed  like  paper ;  others 
are  drawn  bodily  under  the  sheet;  others  are  thrown 
violently  against  one  another ;  some  are  forced  partly  upon 
the  ice.  Meanwhile  the  owners  and  officers  of  the  boats, 
aided  by  the  firemen  and  citizens,  are  making  desperate 
exertions  to  save  their  property,  and  the  whole  levee,  as 
far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  is  a  scene  of  excitement  and  conr 
sternation.  At  the  breaking  up  of  the  ice  in  1866,  seventeen 
steamboats  were  crushed  and  sunk  in  a  few  minutes.  It  is 
within  the  compass  of  human  ability  to  provide  a  remedy 
for  this  annual  danger.  St.  Louis  must  put  on  its  thinking- 
cap  and  consider  it. 

If  there  is  any  one  who  regards  the  Roman  CathoEc 
Church  as  an  institution  that  has  nearly  played  its  part  in 
this  world,  a  short  residence  at  St.  Louis  will  dispel  the 
delusion.  The  Catholics,  French,  German,  and  Irish,  are 
nearly  one  half  the  population ;  and  the  property  of  the 
Church,  in  buildings  and  lands,  is  estimated  at  fifteen  mil- 
lions of  dollars.  From  the  single  tent  in  which  the  mass 
was  first  celebrated  on  the  site  of  the  city  one  hundred  years 
ago,  succeeded  soon  by  a  small  church  of  logs,  the  number 
of  places  of  worship  has  increased,  until  now  there  are 


644  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

twenty-nine  Catholic  churches  and  chapels,  while  no  other 
sect  has  more  than  nine.  Nor  have  the  Catholics  there 
wasted  their  resources  in  the  erection  of  churches  prema- 
turely splendid.  The  force  of  the  church  in  St.  Louis  is 
expended  in  the  education  of  youth,  in  the  care  of  the  sick, 
in  reclaiming  the  fallen,  in  providing  refuge  for  the  unfortu- 
nate. The  catalogue  of  the  Roman  Catholic  institutions  of 
the  city  tells  a  story  that  may  well  excite  reflection  in  the, 
Protestant  mind. 

We  shall  not  soon  forget  a  delightful  hour  spent  in  one  of 
the  great  convent  schools,  of  St.  Louis.  How  clean,  how 
bright,  how  tranquil  the  place  !  We  Protestants,  who  only 
see  nuns  passing  along  the  streets,  with  their  ugly  bonnets, 
their  black  dresses,  and  their  downcast  oyes,  are  apt  to 
conclude  that  a  nun  must  be  a  forlorn  and  melancholy  being. 
They  do  not  appear  such  in  their  convent  homes.  We  found 
the  Sisters  of  the  "Visitation"  witty,  high-bred,  well- 
informed  ladies,  full  of  pleasant  badinage  and  innocent  fun. 
How  could  they,  indeed,  be  other  than  very  happy  women, 
with  their  future  secure,  with  an  arduous,  noble  employ- 
ment, and  with  that  tide  of  young  and  joyous  life  streaming 
in  every  morning  at  the  doors  of  their  abode  ?  The  Catholic 
priests,  too,  —  they  really  do  not  appear  to  be  the  terrible 
creatures  that  some  of  us  think  them  to  be. 

But  come,  reader,  let  us  visit  one  of  them  together.  It 
will  do  us  good  who  never  before  spoke  with  a  Catholic 
priest,  still  less  entered  a  Catholic  parsonage.  The  house  is 
not  as  large  nor  as  elegantly  furnished  as  the  residences  of 
the  Protestant  preachers ;  but  it  is  sufficiently  comfortable. 

A  robust  and  middle-aged  housekeeper  shows  us  into  a 
library  arranged  for  work  rather  than  enjoyment.  We 
notice  all  the  familiar  books,  and  there  is  nothing  in  the  room 
peculiar,  except  a  crucifix  before  the  writing-desk  and  a  few 


THE   CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  645 

engravings  of  a  Catholic  cast.  And  what  is  this  yellow-cov- 
ered pamphlet  on  the  table  ?  Can  it  be  ?  It  is  the  last  num- 
ber of  the  "  Westminster  Keview "  !  Enter,  a  stout,  handsome, 
healthy-looking  gentleman,  in  the  house  attire  of  a  priest, 
evidently  a  gentleman  and  man  of  the  world.  The  yellow- 
covered  Review  is  a  convenient  subject  of  conversation,  and 
we  soon  discover  that  the  "  Church"  reciprocates  the  friendly 
feeling  of  the  "  Rationalists,"  and  is  duly  sensible  of  the  fair- 
ness and  candor  of  the  Westminster  when  it  treats  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Extremes  meet.  The  intelligent  and 
thinking  portion  of  the  Catholic  clergy  appears  to  be  of 
opinion  that  there  are  but  two  consistent  persons  in  the 
world :  namely,  the  Roman  Catholic  who  surrenders  his  rea- 
son, and  the  Rationalist  who  uses  it.  They  are  perfectly 
aware,  also,  of  the  immense  advantage  which  the  Catholic 
Church  derives  from  the  restraints  imposed  by  the  narrower 
Protestants  upon  the  enjoyment  of  such  innocent  pleasures 
as  dancing  and  the  drama.  Here  again  extremes  meet. 
This  excellent  priest  remarked  upon  the  demoralizing  influ- 
ence of  ascetic  Protestantism  and  of  the  "  moral  strait-jacket" 
of  the  Evangelical  school,  just  as  Theodore  Parker  did  in 
Boston,  and  as  Robert  Colly er  does  at  Chicago. 

"  Does  the  Catholic  Church  expect  again  to  rule  Chris- 
tendom, and  absorb  at  length  all  the  sects,  and  the  '  West- 
minster Review '  as  well  ?  " 

"  The  Catholic  Church  will  never  cease  to  claim  that  she 
is  the  sole  divinely  appointed  and  infallible  teacher  of  God's 
will  to  men." 

"But  these  Western  men  will  never  surrender  their  under- 
standings." 

"Nor  will  I  mine.  The  Church  says,  Use  your  reason  so 
far  as  to  examine  her  credentials.  Nor  then  does  she  require 
blind  submission.  The  Church  gives  a  reason  for  all  that 


646  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

she  demands,  and  leaves  nothing  unexplained,  except  the 
unexplainable.  In  the  teachings  of  the  Catholic  Church  I 
find  nothing  contrary  to  my  reason,  though  I  find  much  that 
is  above  and  beyond  my  reason ;  nor  can  I  see  any  halting- 
place  between  the  Catholic  faith  and  utter  unbelief." 

A  long  and  most  instructive  conversation  with  this  gifted 
and  genial  clergyman  confirmed  us  in  the  impression  that  cer- 
tain Protestant  practices  and  beliefs  are  giving  the  Catholics 
a  considerable  advantage  in  the  Western  country.  The  great 
free  West,  however,  will  never  be  Catholic;  since  the 
incredible  doctrines  of  that  Church  neutralize  the  power  of 
its  exquisite  organization,  and  its  organization  is  so  inter- 
woven with  its  doctrines  that  the  Church  cannot  revise  its 
creed  without  destroying  itself.  The  Western  man  will 
never  abdicate  his  right  to  think.  The  priest  may  indeed 
convert  the  howling  dervishes  of  the  camp-meeting  into 
orderly  worshippers,  and  may  allure  the  negro  by  the  splen- 
dor of  his  vestments  and  the  pomp  of  his  ceremonies.  But 
the  intelligent  and  ruling  minds  of  the  West  will  be  forever 
beyond  his  reach. 

The  basis  of  the  civilization  of  St.  Louis,  then,  is  Catho- 
lic. But  the  progressive  and  propelling  institutions  are 
well  rooted  there,  and  no  one  need  fear  for  the  future  of  the 
city.  The  public  school  system  is  in  vigorous  operation,  and 
is  sustained  by  the  public  opinion  of  the  State.  Governor 
Fletcher,  who  presides  with  so  much  ability  over  the  inter- 
ests of  Missouri,  is  its  devoted  friend.  The  Washington 
University,  founded  on  the  principle  of  absolute  and  entire 
toleration,  has  already  a  considerable  endowment,  a  hand- 
some edifice,  and  a  most  enlightened  and  patriotic  corps  of 
professors.  It  is  destined  to  play  a  leading  part  in  the 
higher  education  of  the  Southwest.  One  of  the  largest  and 
most  respectable  of  the  Protestant  churches  in  St.  Louis  is 


THE    CITY   OF   ST.    LOUIS.  647 

the  Unitarian,  the  pastor  of  which,  Dr.  William  G.  Eliot,  is 
the  ally  and  champion  of  everything  that  makes  for  the  good 
of  the  Southwest.  For  many  years  there  has  been  a  Mer- 
cantile Library  in  the  city,  which  has  now  nearly  thirty 
thousand  volumes.  Its  principal  room,  which  is  more  a 
gallery  than  a  library,  contains  sixty-eight  works  of  art,  all 
of  which  are  interesting,  and  many  excellent.  It  was  at  St. 
Louis  that  Harriet  Hosmer  found  her  most  liberal  patron, 
Mr.  Wayman  Crow,  under  whose  auspices  she  studied  and 
practised  her  art  in  the  city ;  and  it  is  in  this  Library  that 
the  largest  collection  of  her  works  is  to  be  found.  St. 
Louis  is  proud  of  Miss  Hosmer,  and  claims  a  kind  of 
property  in  her  fame. 

How  interesting  the  spectacle  of  those  rising  cities  of  the 
West !  How  cheering  to  discover  that  the  ruling  minds  in 
them  all  are  alive  to  the  fact  that  posterity,  to  the  remotest 
ages,  will  be  affected  by  what  the  men  do  who  control  the 
cities  that  they  are  now  forming !  Why  this  rage  to  visit 
the  Old  World  ?  Since  we  are  assured  that  good  Americans 
when  they  die  go  to  Paris,  why  not  defer  Paris  till  then, 
and  see  in  this  life  the  seats  of  future  empire  in  the  West  ? 
Nothing  could  so  cheer  and  expand  an  American  citizen. 

41 


WHAT  SORT  OF  MAN   IS  BISMARCK? 


HE  is  descended  from  a  noble  and  ancient  family,  which 
traces  its  origin  far  back  into  the  middle  ages,  and  which 
has  contributed  to  the  service  of  the  state  many  able  men, 
both  in  the  cabinet  and  in  the  field.  In  the  early  part  of 
the  reign  of  Frederick  the  Great,  a  Bismarck  was  one  of  the 
ministers  of  that  king,  and  appears  to  have  stood  high  in  his 
confidence.  A  Count  Bismarck,  who  had  served  with  dis- 
tinction in  the  armies  of  several  of  the  German  States,  was 
living  recently  in  retirement,  an  old  man  past  eighty.  This 
aged  soldier  is  the  author  of  many  works  upon  military 
science,  which  are  held  in  esteem  in  Europe. 

Baron  Von  Bismarck,  born  in  1814,  studied  at  three  of  the 
principal  universities  of  Germany,  and  went  from  college 
into  the  army.  In  Prussia  every  man  of  whatever  rank  is 
required  to  serve  in  the  army  for  a  short  time,  and  after 
learning  the  trade  of  soldier,  he  is  liable  to  be  called  on  for 
the  defence  of  his  country  in  time  of  need.  Bismarck,  it 
appears,  adopted  the  military  profession  from  choice ;  but, 
in  1846,  when  he  attended  the  Diet  of  his  province,  he 
retired  from  the  army.  Both  in  that  body  and  in  the  general 
Diet  of  the  following  year,  he  acquired  some  notoriety  for 
the  boldness  with  which  he  denounced  everything  that 
savored  of  democracy.  He  is  said  to  have  expressed  the 
desire  that  all  the  large  cities  might  be  swept  from  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  because  they  were  the  centres  of  democracy 
and  constitutionalism.  If  he  said  this,  it  was  probably  only 


650  TKIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  extravagance  of  a  young  man  irritated  by  contradiction, 
or  heated  with  wine. 

In  1848,  the  storm  swept  over  Europe  which  drove  one 
king  from  his  throne,  and  made  every  king  feel  unsafe.  He 
is  remembered  at  that  period  as  an  inflexible  opponent  of 
popular  government,  and  a  defender  of  Absolutism.  In 
1851,  the  ability  and  audacity  with  which  he  supported  his 
ideas  in  the  Prussian  Parliament  attracted  the  notice  of  the 
King,  Frederick  William  the  Fourth.  The  king  invited 
him  into  the  diplomatic  service,  and  gave  him  the  important 
appointment  of  Minister  Resident  of  Frankfort,  one  of  the 
most  important  diplomatic  posts.  Even  then  he  had  dis- 
tinctly conceived  the  policy  which  he  has  since  so  trium- 
phantly carried  out.  Even  then,  while  appearing  to  oppose 
and  distrust  the  people  of  Germany,  he  was  preparing  the 
way  for  the  realization  of  their  dearest  wish. 

The  dream  of  every  good  German,  for  many  a  year,  has 
been  to  see  the  entire  German  people,  all  who  speak  the 
German  tongue  and  share  the  German  character,  united  as  a 
Confederation  under  one  head,  so  as  to  form  a  great  Ger- 
man nation,  and  be  a  controlling  power  in  the  centre  of 
Europe.  Bismarck,  too,  indulged  this  fond  desire,  and  he 
saw  clearly  the  only  probable  means  of  realizing  it.  Either 
Prussia  or  Austria,  he  thought,  must  gain  such  an  ascendency 
in  Germany  as  to  draw  to  itself  a  great  preponderance  of  the 
smaller  States,  and  thus  unite  Germany  by  absorbing  it. 
Austria  he  believed  incapable  of  playing  this  grand  part, 
nor  would  he  have  been  willing  to  see  her  attempt  it. 
Devoted  to  Prussia,  he  naturally  desired  Prussia  to  be  chief 
in  Germany,  and  to  become  another  name  for  Germany.  To 
accomplish  this,  he  foresaw  that  Prussia  must  encounter, 
first,  Austria  in  the  field,  and  submit  the  question  to  the 
arbitrament  of  the  musket.  But,  twenty  years  ago,  Prussia 


WHAT   SORT   OF   MAN   IS   BISMARCK?  651 

was  not  considered  a  match  for  Austria  in  the  field.  Bis- 
marck himself  did  not  consider  her  such;  and  he  early 
conceived  the  plan  for  dividing  her  powers,  which  he  has 
since  executed. 

From  Frankfort,  Bismarck  was  transferred,  in  1852,  to 
Vienna,  where  he  studied  the  Austrian  Empire  with  special 
reference  to  his  favorite  system.  While  still  in  the  diplomatic 
service,  he  published  his  celebrated  pamphlet,  entitled 
"  Prussia  and  the  Italian  Question,"  in  which  he  expressed 
the  opinion  that  Italy's  sullen  discontent  was  Austria's  weak- 
ness ;  and  endeavored  to  show  that  an  alliance  between 
Prussia,  Russia,  and  France  was  the  true  method  by  which 
Prussia  could  gain  the  ascendency  in  Germany,  while  deliv- 
ering the  northern  provinces  of  Italy  from  the  grasp  of 
Austria.  This  pamphlet  produced  considerable  effect  in 
Prussia,  and  attracted  attention  elsewhere. 

ID  1859,  Bismarck  was  appointed  Ambassador  to  Russia. 
He  resided  at  St.  Petersburg  three  years,  and  it  is  supposed 
that  he  then  prepared  the  Russian  Emperor  for  the  events 
which  followed,  and  disposed  him  to  witness  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  Prussia  with  satisfaction.  In  May,  1862,  he  reached 
the  highest  diplomatic  honor  by  being  appointed  Ambassador 
to  Paris ;  but  after  a  stay  of  but  three  months  at  the  gay 
capital,  he  was  suddenly  recalled  to  Berlin,  where  he 
received  appointments  which  made  him  Prime  Minister  of 
the  king,  and  the  almost  absolute  controller  of  the  policy 
of  the  government. 

It  was  not,  however,  without  a  severe  struggle  that  he 
held  in  check  the  democratic  tendencies  of  the  nation.  Both 
in  parliament  and  at  the  council  board  he  was  the  supporter 
of  measures  which  tended  to  strengthen  the  authority  of  the 
king,  and  enable  him  to  wield  without  restraint  the  resources 
of  the  kingdom.  He  was  an  exceedingly  unpopular  min- 


652  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

ister,  down  to  the  very  moment  when  he  gave  his  country- 
men the  keen  gratification  of  seeing  their  country  the 
unquestionable  head  of  Germany. 

The  series  of  masterly  manoeuvres  by  which  he  hurled  Gari- 
baldi, Victor  Emanuel,  and  the  Italian  people  upon  the  rear 
of  Austria,  while  the  Prussian  Army  attacked  her  in  front,  is 
still  fresh  in  the  recollection  of  every  reader.  Prussia  was 
perfectly  ready  for  the  struggle,  and  the  Prussian  army  had 
that  effective  weapon,  the  needle-gun.  Austria,  unprepared, 
ill-armed,  deep  in  debt,  and  powerfully  attacked  in  the 
south,  was  unable  to  withstand  the  vigorous  onslaught  of 
the  Prussian  forces.  One  short  campaign  sufficed.  Austria 
was  compelled  to  relinquish  her  hold  upon  Venetia,  and 
compelled  to  acquiesce  in  the  absorption  into  Prussia  of 
several  powerful  German  States. 

Passing  over  his  more  recent  exploits,  let  me  answer  the 
question  proposed :  What  sort  of  man  is  he  ? 

On  the  the  first  of  April,  1871,  he  was  fifty-six  years  of 
age. 

In  person  he  is  tall  and  strongly  built,  with  the  imposing 
carriage  that  belongs  to  a  large  and  well-proportioned  figure. 
We  are  all  familiar  with  the  lineaments  of  his  countenance, — 
his  lofty  forehead,  his  bald  head,  his  full,  military  mustache  ; 
but  there  is  said  to  be  an  animation  in  his  face,  and  an  air 
of  high  breeding,  which  photographs  seldom  preserve.  In 
his  demeanor  and  conversation  there  is  a  blending  of  soldier- 
like directness  with  the  courtesy  of  the  aristocrat.  When 
he  is  dressed  in  his  white  military  uniform,  and  sits  upon 
one  of  his  own  thorough-bred  horses,  he  is  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  looking  men  in  Europe. 

He  is  a  man  of  homely,  domestic  habits.  In  the  letters 
to  his  wife  and  sister,  a  great  number  of  which  have  been 
published,  there  are  many  allusions  to  his  three  children, 


WHAT   SORT   OF    MAN   IS    BISMARCK?  653 

their  infantile  complaints,  the  trouble  he  had  in  buying  them 
suitable  Christmas  presents,  and  to  the  pains  he  took  with 
their  habits  and  education.  A  gentleman  who  lived  for  sev- 
eral months  under  Bismarck's  roof,  records  that  the  great 
statesman  constantly  exhorted  his  two  boys  at  table  V>  sit 
upright ;  and  that  in  consequence  of  his  hearing  so  much  said 
upon  this  point,  he  got  into  the  habit  of  sitting  upright  him- 
self, and  found,  at  the  end  of  his  visit,  that  he  had  become 
two  inches  taller.  At  Christmas  time,  while  the  children 
were  young,  there  was  always  a  great  Christmas  tree  in  the 
dining-room,  which  was  consecrated  and  exhibited  with  all 
the  usual  ceremonies. 

Naturally —  as  he  frequently  himself  remarks —  Bismarck 
was  an  idle,  pleasure-loving  man,  who  desired  nothing  better 
than  to  lead  the  life  and  enjoy  the  sports  of  "  an  honest  coun- 
try gentleman."  He  said,  in  1863,  when  he  was  in  the  full 
tide  of  his  career  as  Prime  Minister,  "  I  regard  every  one  as  a 
benefactor  who  .seeks  to  bring  about  my  fall."  Nothing  is 
more- evident  in  his  family  letters,  than  that  he  is  extrava- 
gantly fond  of  hunting.  We  find  such  passages  as  this  :  — 

"  Besides  several  roebucks  and  stags,  I  shot  five  elks,  one  a  very 
fine  stag,  measuring  roughly  six  feet  eight,  without  his  colossal 
head.  He  fell  like  a  hare,  but  as  he  was  still  alive,  I  mercifully 
gave  him  my  other  barrel.  Scarcely  had  I  done  so  when  a  second 
came  up,  still  taller,  so  close  to  me  that  Engel,  my  loader,  had  to 
jump  behind  a  tree  to  avoid  being  run  over.  I  was  obliged  to 
look  at  him  in  a  friendly  way,  as  I  had  no  other  shot." 

Even  when  he  had  no  such  luck  as  this,  or  no  luck  at  all. 
he  hunted  all  day.  In  another  letter,  he  writes  : — 

"Yesterday  we  had  a  very  tired  day's  sport,  long  and  rocky ;  it 
produced  me  one  woodcock ;  but  it  has  tamed  me  so  completely, 
that  to-day  I  am  sitting  at  home  with  bandages,  so  as  to  be  ready 


654  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

to  travel  to-morrow  and  shoot  the  next  day.  I  really  am  aston- 
ished at  myself  for  stopping  at  home  alone  in  such  charming  wea- 
ther, and  can  scarcely  refrain  from  the  abominable  wish  that  the 
others  will  shoot  nothing." 

Usually  he  had  excellent  luck  in  his  hunting.  One  day, 
when  he  shot  over  one  of  the  imperial  parks  near  Vienna,  he 
killed  fifty-three  pheasants  and  fifteen  hares  ;  and,  on  another 
day,  eight  stags.  "I  am  quite  lame,"  he  adds,  "in  hand 
and  cheek  from  shooting."  He  had  all  the  other  tastes  of 
the  country  gentleman.  He  was  passionately  fond  of  his 
horses,  and  often  when  he  was  away  at  Paris  or  some  other 
distant  place,  he  would  sigh  for  some  favorite  animal  in  his 
stables  at  home.  "  Next  to  my  wife  and  children,"  he  once 
wrote  from  Paris,  "I  want  my  black  mare."  It  was  his 
boast,  too,  that  the  country  gentlemen  of  his  neighborhood 
treated  the  peasantry  with  a  degree  of  consideration  and 
generosity,  of  which  "  a  savage  Democrat "  could  form  no 
idea. 

If  we  may  judge  from  his  private  letters,  he  is  a  religious 
man  of  the  old  type,  and  attends  punctually  to  the  obser- 
vances of  the  national  church  of  his  country.  To  a  friend 
who  once  wrote  to  him  respecting  a  scandalous  picture,  in 
which  he  was  represented  sitting  beside  a  noted  actress,  he 
made  a  long  reply,  denying  the  imputation,  and  defending 
the  lady.  In  the  course  of  this  epistle,  the  following  sen- 
tences occur :  — 

"  I  would  to  God  that,  besides  what  is  known  to  the  world,  I  had 
not  other  sins  upon  my  soul,  for  which  I  can  only  hope  for  forgive- 
ness in  a  confidence  upon  the  blood  of  Christ !  As  a  statesman,  I 
am  not  sufficiently  disinterested ;  in  my  own  mind,  I  am  rather 
cowardly ;  because  it  is  not  easy  always  to  get  that  clearness  on 
the  questions  coming  before  me  which  grows  upon  the  soil  of  divine 


WHAT   SORT   OF  MAN   IS   BISMARCK?  655 

confidence.  .  .  .  Among  the  multitude  of  sinners  who  are 
in  need  of  the  mercy  of  God,  I  hope  that  His  grace  will  not  deprive 
me  of  the  staff  of  humble  faith,  in  the  midst  of  the  dangers  and 
doubts  of  my  calling." 

We  observe  also  that  he  had  his  children  both  baptized 
and  confirmed,  and  that,  if  he  is  unable  to  attend  church, 
he  usually  has  prayers  read  by  some  young  clergyman 
at  home. 

In  former  days,  before  experience  and  observation  had 
instructed  and  broadened  him,  he  was  a  Tory  of  the  most 
pronounced  description.  They  relate  an  anecdote  of  him  in 
Berlin,  to  this  effect :  At  a  beer  saloon  much  frequented  by 
conservatives,  Bismarck,  one  evening,  just  as  he  had  taken 
his  seat,  and  was  about  to  drink  his  first  glass  of  beer,  over- 
heard a  man,  who  sat  at  the  next  table,  speak  of  a  member 
of  the  royal  family  in  a  particularly  insulting  manner.  Bis- 
marck rose,  and,  lifting  his  glass  of  beer,  thundered  out : 
"  Out  of  the  house  !  If  you  are  not  off  when  I  have  drunk 
this  beer,  I.  will  break  the  glass  on  your  head  !  " 

Upon  this  there  was  a  wild  commotion  in  the  room,  and 
loud  outcries,  but  Bismarck  drank  his  glass  of  beer  with  the 
utmost  composure.  When  he  had  finished  it,  he  smashed 
the  glass  upon  the  offender's  head.  The  outcries  ceased  for 
a  moment,  and  Bismarck  said  quietly :  "  Waiter,  what  is  to 
pay  for  this  broken  glass  ?  " 

The  manner  in  which  this  outrage  Was  committed  —  Bis- 
marck's commanding  look  and  bearing — carried  the  day; 
the  beer  drinkers  applauded  the  act,  and  the  man  dared  not 
resent  it. 

Bismarck's  attachment  to  the  Crown  of  Prussia  was,  at 
first,  merely  the  instinctive  feeling  of  a  nobleman  for  his 
King.  "  I  am  the  King's  man,"  he  once  said  in  Parliament ; 
and  it  was  such  words  as  these  that  made  him  Prime  Minis- 


(J56  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

ter.  But  Bismarck  is  a  man  of  understanding,  as  well  as  a 
nobleman,  and  this  understanding  has  constantly  grown  and 
expanded  with  the  march  of  events.  When  he  began  his 
public  life,  he  was  an  admirer  of  the  Austrian  system;  but 
when,  after  a  residence  near  the  Austrian  Court,  he  knew 
what  the  Austrian  system  was,  his  feelings  underwent  a 
complete  change,  and  he  adopted  it  as  the  aim  of  his  public 
life,  "  to  snatch  Germany  from  Austrian  oppression,"  and  to 
gather  round  Prussia,  in  a  North  German  Confederation,  all 
the  States  "whose  tone  of  thought,  religion,  manners,  and 
interests  "  were  in  harmony  with  those  of  Prussia. 

"To  attain  this  end,"  he  once  said,  in  conversation,  "I 
would  brave  all  dangers  —  exile,  the  scaffold  itself !  What 
matter  if  they  hang  me,  provided  the  rope  by  which  I  am 
hung  binds  this  new  Germany  firmly  to  the  Prussian 
throne?" 

In  the  course  of  the  conversation  in  which  he  used  this 
language,  which  occurred  in  1866,  he  denied  that  he  was  an 
enemy  to  a  truly  liberal  government. 

"When  the  King  sent  for  me,"  said  he,  "four  years  ago, 
his  Majesty  laid  before  me  a  long  list  of  liberal  concessions. 
I  said  to  the  King :  "  I  accept ;  and  the  more  liberal  the 
government  can  prove  itself,  the  stronger  it  will  be."  The 
Chamber  had  been  obdurate  on  one  side,  and  the  Crown  on 
the  other.  In  the  conflict  I  remained  by  the  King.  My 
respect  for  him,  all  my  antecedents,  all  the  traditions  of  my 
family,  made  it  my  duty  to  do  so.  But  that  I  am  an  adver- 
sary of  parliamentary  government,  is  a  perfectly  gratuitous 
supposition." 

The  leading  ideas  of  his  policy  appear  to  be  these  :  1.  The 
Northern  states  of  Germany  united,  and  Prussia  supreme 
over  all.  2.  The  Prussian  military  system  to  be  preserved 
intact.  3.  The  King's  person  and  authority  inviolable. 


WHAT   SORT    OF  MAN  IS   BISMARCK?  657 

4.  As  much  parliamentary  palaver  as  may  be  necessary  to 
relieve  the  minds  of  the  people  and  veil  the  fact  of  Despotism 
under  Republican  forms.  But  his  is  a  growing  mind,  and, 
if  he  lives  long  enough,  he  may  yet  cooperate  with  the  next 
King  in  making  a  parliament  of  the  Germanic  Empire  the 
supreme  power  of  the  land.  Tory  as  he  may  be,  he  is  not 
deceived  by  the  shows  of  this  world.  When  he  was  Ambassa- 
dor at  Frankfort,  twenty  years  ago,  he  saw,  with  the  clearness 
of  an  honest  mind,  all  the  humbug  of  what  is  called  diplo- 
macy. He  gives  a  humorous  account  of  the  manner  in  which 
he  and  his  fellow-diplomatists  "worried  themselves  with 
their  important  nothings." 

"Nobody,"  he  wrote,  "not  even  the  most  malicious  sceptic 
of  a  Democrat,  believes  what  quackery  and  self-importance 
there  is  in  this  diplomatizing.  ...  I  am  making  enormous 
progress  in  the  art  of  saying  nothing  in  a  great  many  words. 
I  write  reports  of  many  sheets,  which  read  as  tersely  and 
roundly  as  leading  articles ;  and  if  the  minister  can  say  what 
there  is  in  them,  after  he  has  read  them,  he  can  do  more 
than  I  can." 

There  is  a  good  sense  and  good-humor  in  his  private  let- 
ters, which  indicate  the  man  who  can  rise  superior  to  the 
traditions  of  his  order,  and  who,  from  being  the  King's  man 
at  forty,  may  grow  to  be  the  Nation's  man  and  the  People's 
man  at  sixty. 


PAINLESS  SURGERY  BY  ETHER. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  PROCESS. 

THIKTY-FIVE  years  ago  there  was  a  dentist  in  Boston 
named  William  Thomas  Green  Morton,  a  native  of  Massa- 
chusetts, about  twenty-five  years  of  age.  Zealous  and  suc- 
cessful in  his  calling,  he  had  already  improved  in  some  partic- 
ulars upon  its  usual  practice  ;  but  he  was  much  perplexed  by 
the  difficulty  of  inducing  patients  to  have  their  old  teeth 
entirely  removed  before  new  ones  were  inserted.  It  was 
not  common  at  that  day,  as  it  now  is,  for  dentists  to  advise 
so  unpopular  an  operation,  and  it  seemed  presumption  in 
this  young  practitioner  to  demand  it.  It  was  useless  to 
explain  to  patients  the  great  and  lasting  advantages  of  such 
a  method,  for  the  pain  was  top  great  to  be  endured,  so  long 
as  dentists  of  repute  pronounced  it  unnecessary. 

The  thought  occurred  to  the  young  man  one  day,  that 
perhaps  a  way  might  be  discovered  of  lessening  human 
sensibility  to  pain.  He  had  not  received  a  scientific  educa- 
tion, nor  had  he  more  scientific  knowledge  than  an  intelli- 
gent young  man  would  naturally  possess  who  had  passed 
through  the  ordinary  schools  of  a  New  England  town. 
Instead  of  resorting  to  books,  or  consulting  men  of  science, 
he  began,  from  time  to  time,  to  experiment  with  various 
well-known  substances. 

First  he  tried  draughts  of  wine  and  brandy,  sometimes  to 
the  intoxication  of  the  patient ;  but  as  soon  as  the  instru- 
ment was  applied,  consciousness  revived,  and  long  before 


660  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

the  second  tooth  was  out,  the  patient,  though  not  perfectly 
aware  of  what  was  going  on,  was  roaring  with  agony.  He 
tried  laudanum  in  doses  of  two  hundred  and  three  hundred 
drops,  and  opium  in  masses  often  grains,  frequently  renew- 
ing the  dose  until  the  patient  would  be  in  a  condition  truly 
deplorable.  Dr.  Morton  records  in  his  diary,  that  on  one 
occasion  he  gave  a  lady  five  hundred  drops  of  laudanum  in 
forty-five  minutes,  which  did  indeed  lessen  the  pain  of  the 
operation,  but  it  took  her  a  whole  week  to  recover  from  the 
effects  of  the  narcotic. 

This  would  never  do,  and  he  soon  abandoned  the  prac- 
tice. Attributing  his  failure  to  his  ignorance,  he  entered  a 
physician's  office  as  a  student  of  medicine,  and  while  still 
carrying  on  his  business,  pursued  his  medical  studies  until 
he  graduated  from  the  medical  school  of  Harvard  College  a 
Doctor  of  Medicine. 

One  day  in  July,  1844,  a  young  lady  called  upon  him  to 
have  a  tooth  filled  which  was  in  so  sensitive  a  condition  that 
she  could  not  endure  the  touch  of  an  instrument.  It 
occurred  to  him,  at  length,  to  apply  to  the  tooth  some  sul- 
phuric ether,  the  effect  of  which,  in  benumbing  the  parts 
of  the  body  to  which  it  was  applied,  had  become  familiar  to 
him  during  his  medical  studies.  The  ether  seemed  to  allay 
the  sensitiveness  of  the  tooth  in  some  degree,  but  not 
enough  to  admit  of  the  operation  being  finished  at  one  sit- 
ting. She  had  to  call  several  times,  and  every  time  she 
came  the  ether  was  applied,  always  with  some  effect  in 
lessening  her  pain.  On  one  occasion,  when  he  happened  to 
use  the  ether  more  freely  and  for  a  longer  time  than  before, 
he  was  surprised  to  discover  that  the  gum  near  the  tooth 
was  so  benumbed  as  to  be  almost  insensible  to  the  pressure 
of  the  instrument. 

Now  it  was  that  the  idea  occurred  to  him,  that  if,  in  some 


PAINLESS    SURGERY   BY   ETHER.  661 

way,  the  wliole  system  could  be  etherized,  his  dream  of 
extracting  teeth  without  pain  might  be  realized,  at  least 
in  part. 

But  how  could  this  be  done  ?  Could  the  body  be  bathed 
in  ether?  Would  washing  the  whole  surface  answer? 
Such  thoughts  as  these  passed  through  his  mind-,  for 
although  he  had  witnessed  the  effects  of  laughing-gas,  it  did 
not  yet  occur  to  him  to  try  whether  ether  inhaled  would 
benumb  the  common  source  of  pain  and  pleasure,  the  brain. 
Meanwhile  he  reflected  constantly  upon  ether,  read  and  con- 
versed upon  ether;  always  hopeful,  and  sometimes  confident 
that  he  was  upon  the  path  leading  to  a  discovery  that  would 
make  his  fortune. 

Baffled  for  the  time  in  his  experiments,  and  absorbed 
in  business  and  study,  several  months  passed  before  he  took 
another  step  toward  the  great  achievement  of  his  life.  The 
subject,  indeed,  had  somewhat  faded  from  his  mind,  when 
it  was  revived  by  a  ludicrous  scene  in  one  of  the  medical 
class-rooms  at  the  University.  Some  laughing-gas  was 
administered  to  a  patient  for  the  purpose,  as  the  experi- 
menter said,  of  pulling  a  tooth  without  pain.  This  is  now 
done  every  day ;  but  the  experiment  did  not  succeed.  The 
gas  was  administered,  but  as  soon  as  the  experimenter  began 
to  pull  at  the  tooth,  the  patient  gave  such  a  yell  of  agony, 
that  the  students  laughed  and  hooted  as  only  medical  stu- 
dents can,  and  the  operator  retired  in  confusion. 

Here  let  me  pause  and  tell  who  the  unlucky  operator  in 
laughing-gas  was.  He  too,  played  a  leading,  perhaps  an 
essential,  part  in  the  great  discovery.  His  name  was  Horace 
Wells,  dentist,  of  Hartford. 

But  observe,  first  of  all,  that  neither  of  these  young  men 
claim  to  have  invented  the  substances  —  ether  and  laughing- 
gas  — -  now  used  in  destroying  sensibility  to  pain ;  nor  was 


662  TKIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

either  of  them  the  first  to  originate  the  idea  of  inhaling  gas 
for  the  purpose.  The  idea  was  original  with  Sir  Humphry 
Davy.  In  1798,  when  he  was  twenty  years  old,  he  was 
appointed  chemical  superintendent  of  a  hospital  for  the  cure 
of  pulmonary  diseases  by  the  inhalation  of  different  gases. 
This  appointment  led  to  his  undertaking  a  series  of  experi- 
ments with  the  various  gases  employed,  particularly  the 
protoxyd  of  nitrogen,  sometimes  called  by  him,  "the  pleas- 
ure-giving air,"  and  by  us  laughing-gas.  In  the  course  of 
his  remarks  on  this  gas,  he  used  the  following  language  :  — 

"  As  nitrous  oxide  (another  name  for  the  same  gas),  in  its  exten- 
sive operation,  appears  capable  of  destroying  physical  pain,  it  may 
probably  be  used  with  advantage  during  surgical  operations,  in  which 
no  great  effusion  of  blood  takes  place." 

Here,  then,  is  the  suggestion,  but  only  the  suggestion,  and 
it  was  put  forward  by  Sir  Humphry,  with  a  hesitation 
unusual  in  an  experimenter  twenty-one  years  of  age.  The 
gas  only  appeared  capable  of  destroying  pain,  and  its  advan- 
tageous use  was  only  probable  in  some  cases.  Sir  Humphry 
Davy's  experiments  with  the  laughing-gas,  an  account  of 
which  he  published  in  the  year  1800,  attracted  universal 
attention,  and  it  became  common,  in  courses  of  chemical 
lectures,  both  in  colleges  and  lyceums,  to  administer  the  gas, 
The  fact,  therefore,  became  familiar  to  a  large  number  of 
persons,  that  people  under  the  influence  of  this  gas  were  not 
susceptible  to  such  pain  as  is  inflicted  by  pinching  or  slight 
pricking  with  a  pin. 

Horace  Wells,  born  in  Vermont  in  1815,  established  him- 
self, in  1836,  at  Hartford  as  a  dentist.  Being  an  intelligent 
man  and  skilful  operator,  he  soon  obtained  a  large  practice. 
Like  Dr.  Morton,  he  was  much  inconvenienced  by  the  unwil- 
lingness of  patients  to  submit  to  the  pain  of  having  dental 


PAINLESS   SURGERY  BY  ETHER.  663 

operations  performed  thoroughly ;  and  like  Dr.  Morton,  too, 
he  had  tried  the  effect  of  laudanum  and  spirituous  liquors  in 
lessening  sensibility.  He  had  even  thought  of  trying  the 
laughing-gas ;  but  he  was  prevented  from  doing  so  by  the 
dread  of  it  which  existed  in  the  public  mind,  owing  to  a 
person  having  died  from  the  effects  of  it  in  Connecticut 
some  years  before.  It  does  not  appear,  from  his  narrative, 
that  he  had  ever  heard  of  Sir  Humphry  Davy's  suggestion, 
quoted  above. 

"  Reasoning  from  analogy,"  he  says,  "I  was  led  to  believe 
that  surgical  operations  might  be  performed  without  pain,  by 
the  fact  that  an  individual,  when  much  excited  from  ordinary 
causes,  may  receive  severe  wounds,  without  manifesting  the 
least  pain ;  as,  for  instance,  the  man  who  is  engaged  in  com- 
bat, may  have  a  limb  severed  from  his  body,  after  which  he 
testifies  that  it  was  attended  with  no  pain  at  the  time ;  and 
so  the  man  who  is  intoxicated  with  spirituous  liquor  may  be 
severely  beaten  without  his  manifesting  pain,  and  his  frame 
in  this  state  seems  to  be  more  tenacious  of  life  than  under 
ordinary  circumstances.  By  these  facts  I  was  led  to  inquire 
if  the  same  result  would  not  follow  the  inhalation  of  exhila- 
rating gas." 

This  was  the  state  of  his  mind  on  the  subject  when,  on  the 
10th  of  September,  1844,  Mr.  G.  Q.  Coltoii  gave  in  Hart- 
ford a  public  exhibition  of  the  laughing-gas,  which  Dr. 
Wells  attended.  In  the  course  of  the  evening  a  man,  after 
inhaling  the  gas,  bruised  himself  severely  by  falling  over 
some  benches.  Dr.  Wells  was  quick  to  observe  that  the 
man  felt  no  pain,  and  he  at  once  said  to  a  friend  :  "A  man, 
by  taking  that  gas,  could  have  a  tooth  extracted,  or  a  limb 
amputated,  and  not  feel  the  pain  I " 

The  very  next  day  —  that  is  to  say,  September  the  llth, 
1844 — he  put  the  matter  to  the  test  by  having  one  of  hia 

42 


664  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

own  teeth  extracted  while  under  the  influence  of  the  gas. 
The  operation  was  painless.  Soon  after  he  repeated  the 
experiment  about  fifteen  times  with  perfect  success.  Other 
dentists  in  Hartford  employed  the  same  gas  in  their  practice 
during  the  autumn  of  1844.  We  have  the  sworn  testimony 
to  this  effect  of  respectable  dentists  who  used  the  gas  at  that 
time,  and  of  several  gentlemen  who  had  teeth  extracted 
without  pain  after  inhaling  it.  The  friends  of  Horace  Wells, 
I  think,  have  established  their  main  position,  that  he  was  the 
first  man  in  the  world  who  ever  successfully  used  a  gas  for 
destroying  sensibility  to  pain.  If  human  testimony  can 
establish  anything,  it  has  established  this. 

It  seems,  also,  that  Dr.  Wells  was  aware  that  ether 
possessed  the  same  property,  that  he  often  conversed  with 
professional  friends  upon  the  pain-suspending  power  of 
ether,  and  that  the  question  was  discussed  between  them, 
whether  it  would  answer  as  well  as  the  nitrous  oxide.  They 
concluded- — but  without  having  tried  the  experiment  —  that 
the  nitrous  oxide  gas  was  easier  to  inhale,  less  offensive,  and 
more  safe.  For  the  extraction  of  teeth,  the  laughing-gas  is 
still  found  more  convenient  than  ether ;  but  it  would  not 
avail  for  any  operation  in  surgery  which  requires  more  than 
a  few  minutes. 

In  December,  1844,  Dr.  Wells  went  to  Boston  for  the 
purpose  of  making  known  his  discovery  to  physicians  and 
scientific  men.  Dr.  Jackson,  he  says,  received  his  state- 
ments with  ridicule  and  contempt.  The  celebrated  surgeon 
Dr.  Warren,  however,  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  address 
the  medical  class  of  Harvard  College  on  the  subject,  and  to 
perform  an  experiment  before  them. 

It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  address  a  class  of  medical 
students  with  effect,  for  they  are  not  the  most  patient  of 
mortals,  and  they  are  accustomed  to  express  their  feelings 


PAINLESS   SURGERY  BY   ETHER.  665 

in  a  noisy  and  emphatic  way  Dr  Wells,  too, — not  yet 
thirty  years  of  age,  —  was  constitutionally  diffident,  and  did 
not  succeed  very  well  in  his  preliminary  remarks.  But  a 
successful  experiment  would  have  made  amends.  The  class 
having  assembled  in  another  room  to  see  a  tooth  extracted 
without  pain,  the  gas  was  administered  to  the  patient. 
Unfortunately  he  did  not  take  enough,  and  the  moment  the 
wrench  was  applied  he  roared  with  pain.  The  class  hooted, 
hissed,  and  laughed  immoderately.  Dr.  Wells  retired 
in  confusion,  and  returned  to  Hartford  to  report  that  Boston 
had  given  a  sorry  welcome  to  his  discovery. 

This  scene  it  was  which  set  young  Morton  again  upon 
the  path  of  discovery.  The  thought  flashed  upon  his  mind  : 
Why  not  try  the  effect  of  inhaling  ether?  But  at  once 
another  question  arose  :  Is  it  safe  ? 

On  searching  his  medical  books,  he  found  a  passage  which 
informed  him  that  ether,  when  long  inhaled,  produces  a 
kind  of  stupefaction,  from  which  it  was  not  certain  that  the 
patient  could  be  restored.  At  least,  it  was  not  possible  to 
ascertain  to  what  degree  of  stupefaction  it  was  safe  to 
reduce  the  patient.  Discouraging  as  this  was,  he  began 
from  this  time  timidly  to  experiment  upon  himself.  At  first 
he  made  a  mixture  of  opium  and  ether,  which  he  warmed 
over  a  fire,  and  then  inhaled  the  vapor  that  was  generated. 
Some  degree  of  numbness,  he  thought,  was  produced, 
but  the  -experiment  gave  him  headaches  so  severe  that  he  was 
obliged  to  discontinue  them. 

He  received  soon  after  a  student  of  dentistry,  who  told 
him  that  he  had  often  inhaled  pure  ether  when  he  was  a 
school-boy,  and  in  considerable  quantities,  without  experien- 
cing any  harm. 

Fortified  by  this  and  other  testimony,  he  bought  a  quan- 
tity of  ether,  and  went  into  the  country  to  make  experiments 


666  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

upon  animals.  After  many  absurd  failures  and  sone  partial 
successes,  he  succeeded  in  etherizing  a  dog,  a  frisky  black- 
and-tan  terrier,  and  this  he  accomplished  in  the  way  com- 
monly practised  at  the  present  time.  A  handful  of  cotton 
saturated  with  ether  was  placed  at  the  bottom  of  a  tin  vessel, 
and  the  dog's  head  held  directly  over  it. 

"In  a  short  time,"  says  Morton,  "the  dog  wilted  com- 
pletely away  in  my  hands,  and  remained  insensible  to  all  my 
efforts  to  arouse  him  by  moving  or  pinching  him." 

And,  what  was  infinitely  more  important,  three  minutes 
after  the  vessel  was  taken  away,  the  dog  was  frisking  about 
as  usual,  totally  unharmed  I  Need  I  say  that  the  experi- 
menter was  in  the  highest  elation  ? 

w  Soon,"  said  he  to  a  friend,  "  I  shall  have  my  patients  com- 
ing in  at  one  door,  have  all  their  teeth  extracted  without 
knowing  it,  and  then,  going  into  the  next  room,  have  a  full 
set  put  in." 

Feeling  now  that  he  held  a  great  discovery  in  his  hand,  he 
engaged  an  experienced  dentist  to  take  entire  charge  of  his 
business,  while  he  devoted  all  his  time  to  experimenting 
with  ether.  Again  he  went  into  the  country,  where  he  again 
subjected  his  innocent  dog  to  the  process.  One  day  the 
animal,  exhilarated  by  the  ether,  dashed  against  the  glass 
jar  containing  the  fluid,  and  broke  it,  so  that  only  a  small 
portion  remained  at  the  bottom.  There  was  no  further  sup- 
ply nearer  than  Boston,  and,  unwilling  to  lose  the  fruits  of 
his  journey,  he  suddenly  determined  to  use  the  little  ether 
remaining  in  an  experiment  upon  himself.  He  dipped  his 
handkerchief  in  the  ether,  held  it  over  his  mouth  and  nose, 
and  inhaled  the  gas  strongly  into  his  lungs.  A  feeling  of 
lassitude  stole  over  him,  and  this  was  followed  by  a  single 
moment's  unconsciousness. 

"  I  am  firmly  convinced,"  he  afterwards  said,  "  that  a  tooth 
could  have  been  drawn  at  that  time  without  pain." 


SURGERY   BY   ETHER.  667 

Nothing  remained  but  to  try  the  complete  experiment  of 
actually  extracting  a  tooth  from  a  patient  under  the  influ- 
ence of  ether.  Long  he  tried  in  vain  to  hire  and  persuade 
some  one  to  run  the  risk  of  a  trial.  He  repeated  the  experi- 
ment upon  himself  more  than  once,  remaining  on  one  occasion 
insensible  for  neauly  eight  minutes  without  experiencing  any 
subsequent  harm.  Having  now  no  lingering  doubt  of  the  safety 
of  the  process,  he  waited  impatiently  for  some  one  to  come 
in  who  would  consent  to  submit  to  the  stupefying  influence. 

"  One  evening,"  he  tells  us,  "a  man  entered  the  office  suf- 
fering great  pain,  and  wishing  to  have  a  tooth  extracted, 
He  was  afraid  of  the  operation,  and  asked  if  he  could  be 
mesmerized,  I  told  him  I  had  something  better ;  and  sat- 
urating my  handkerchief  with  ether,  gave  it  to  him  to  inhale. 
He  became  unconscious  almost  immediately.  It  was  dark, 
and  Doctor  Hayden  held  the  lamp,  while  I  extracted  a  firmly 
rooted  bicuspid  tooth.  There  was  not  much  alteration  in  the 
pulse,  and  no  relaxation  of  the  muscles.  He  recovered  in  a 
minute,  and  knew  nothing  of  what  had  been  done  to  him  ! " 

The  discovery  was  accomplished.  A  short  time  after,  the 
process  was  repeated  on  a  large  scale  in  the  operating  room 
of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  in  the  presence  of 
a  great  number  of  contemptuous  students  and  incredulous 
physicians.  A  painful  and  widely  rooted  tumor  was  cut 
from  the  face  of  a  young  man  while  he  was  under  the  influ- 
ence of  ether,  administered  by  Dr.  Morton.  When  the 
patient  returned  to  consciousness,  he  said  to  the  surgeon  :  — 

*  I  have  felt  no  pain,  but  only  a  sensation  like  that  of 
scraping  the  part  with  a  blunt  instrument." 

The  students  were  no  longer  contemptuous,  nor  the  doc- 
tors unbelieving ;  but  all  gathered  about  Dr.  Morton,  pro- 
foundly impressed  with  the  importance  of  what  they  had  seen, 
and  overwhelmed  him  with  congratulations. 


668  TEIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

This  great  discovery  brought  upon  the  discoverer,  during 
the  rest  of  his  life,  little  but  vexation  and  bitterness.  As 
the  process  could  not  be  patented,  he  wasted  many  years 
and  many  thousands  of  dollars  in  trying  to  induce  Congress 
to  make  him  a  grant  of  public  money.  He  did  not  succeed ; 
and,  although  he  received  considerable  sums  from  hospitals 
and  medical  colleges  in  recognition  of  his  right,  he  became 
at  last  a  bankrupt,  and  the  sheriff  held  his  estate.  His  cir- 
cumstances afterwards  improved ;  but  he  died  upon  his  farm 
in  Massachusetts^  a  few  years  ago,  a  comparatively  poor 
man. 

He  was  ever  hopeful  and  cheerful.  More  than  once  I  have 
heard  him  relate  this  tale,  and  I  witnessed  his  calm  demeanor 
under  the  repeated  disappointments  he  had  to  suffer  from  not 
receiving  expected  aid  from  Congress.  He  never  com- 
plained, and  was  never  cast  down ;  but,  making  the  best  of 
such  good  fortune  as  befell  him,  enjoyed  life  to  the  end,  and 
never  so  much  as  during  his  last  years. 

By  all  means  let  the  people  of  Connecticut  erect  their  mon- 
ument to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Wells,  who,  first  of  all  man- 
kind, succeeded  in  destroying  sensibility  to  pain  through  the 
inhalation  of  a  gas.  Not  the  less  let  us  honor  the  memory 
of  JMorton,  who  carried  the  discovery  another  step  forward, 
—  that  last  step,  which  renders  it  one  of  the  most  precious 
of  all  the  incidental  results  of  scientific  discovery. 


BENJAMIN   THOMPSON, 

ALIAS    COUNT   RUMFORD. 


WHAT  a  strange  tale  is  the  life  of  this  Yankee  Count !  His 
real  name  was  Benjamin  Thompson,  and  he  was  born  of  a 
respectable  family  of  farmers  in  1753,  at  North  Woburn, 
Massachusetts,  in  a  plain  country  house  that  is  still  stand- 
ing. The  boy  was  father  of  the  man.  From  childhood  he 
exhibited  a  remarkable  interest  in  natural  objects,  and  scien- 
tific experiments ;  and  this  trait  attracted  the  notice  of  a 
clergyman  of  the  neighborhood,  who  gave  him  instruction  in 
mathematics  and  astronomy.  Before  he  was  fourteen,  he 
could  calculate  an  eclipse.  At  the  same  time  he  displayed  a 
singular  manual  dexterity,  being  skilful  in  the  use  of  his 
pocket  knife  and  in  constructing  apparatus  for  experiments, 
in  making  curious  nick-nacks  and  mechanical  contrivances. 
He  also  learned  to  play  the  violin  in  his  boyhood,  and 
showed  a  great  love  for  music,  flowers,  and  other  refined 
pleasures. 

With  all  his  talents  and  aptitudes,  he  was  obliged,  from 
the  narrow  circumstances  of  his  family,  to  be  apprenticed  at 
thirteen  to  a  store-keeper  at  Salem,  with  whom  he  remained 
three  years.  Hogarth,  probably,  would  not  have  pro- 
nounced him  a  "good  apprentice."  He  was  prone,  it  is 
said,  to  play  on  the  fiddle  when  customers  were  not  press- 
ing ;  he  was  particularly  skilful  in  engraving  the  names  of 
his  companions  upon  the  handles  of  their  knives ;  he  con- 
structed an  electrical  machine ;  he  attempted  to  produce  per- 


670  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

petual  motion ;  lie  experimented  in  chemistry ;  he  made  fire- 
works to  celebrate  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act ;  he  watched 
closely  the  winds  and  the  weather ;  he  addressed  inquiries  to 
learned  friends  concerning  the  mysteries  of  the  universe ; 
and  he  reflected  upon  the  greatest  mystery  of  all,— the  ori- 
gin of  life.  A  capital  draughtsman,  too,  he  was  ;  excelling 
in  caricature  likenesses.  In  short,  he  knew  everything  bet- 
ter than  business,  and  did  everything  better  than  serve  his 
master. 

He  changed  his  vocation  in  his  sixteenth  year,  beginning 
the  study  of  medicine,  and  earning  his  livelihood  by  teaching 
school,  according  to  the  time-honored  New  England  custom. 

At  nineteen,  we  find  him  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire, 
teacher  of  a  school  there,  a  splendid  and  gifted  youth,  six 
feet  in  stature,  nobly  proportioned,  with  handsome  features, 
bright  blue  eyes,  and  hair  of  dark  auburn.  He  was  what 
we  may  call  a  natural  gentleman ;  one  of  those  who  easily  take 
to  polite  ways,  and  assume  without  an  effort  an  agreeable 
demeanor ;  one  who,  though  country-born  and  village-bred, 
could  have  adapted  himself  to  the  life  of  a  court. 

While  teaching  school  at  Concord,  he  attracted  the  regard 
of  a  young  widow  of  good  family  and  fortune,  whom,  after  a 
short  courtship,  he  married.  At  twenty-one  he  was  both  a 
husband  and  a  father,  living  with  considerable  elegance  in 
the  principal  mansion  of  the  town,  and,  to  all  appearance, 
he  was  settled  for  life,  as  gentleman  farmer  and  philosopher. 
The  Governor  of  New  Hampshire  appointed  him  major  of  a 
regiment,  so  that  an  honorable  military  title  was  added  to 
the  other  distinctions  of  his  lot. 

But  the  storm  of  the  Revolution  was  impending,  and  then 
appeared  the  radical  defect  of  his  understanding.  If  he  was 
a  gentleman  and  courtier  by  nature,  he  was  also  a  tory  by 
nature,  and  his  heart  was  not  with  his  country  at  this  crisis 


BENJAMIN   THOMPSON.  671 

of  her  fate.  He  performed  no  overt  act  of  hostility  to  the 
patriot  cause ;  but  his  neighbors  felt  and  knew  that  he  was 
not  one  of  them.  At  such  a  time  as  that,  silence  cannot 
conceal  a  man's  sentiments,  because  silence  betrays  the 
secret  of  his  heart  more  forcibly  than  words.  His  house  was 
mobbed.  Fortunately  he  was  absent,  or  it  might  have 
gone  ill  with  him.  At  twenty-two  he  was  a  fugitive  from 
his  home  and  family,  domesticated  with  the  tories  in  Boston  ; 
and  when,  at  length,  General  Washington  compelled  the 
British  to  abandon  that  city,  he  had  done  the  enemy  such 
service  that  he  was  commissioned  to  bear  the  tidings  of  the 
evacuation  to  England  in  a  British  ship  of  war.  He  never 
saw  his  home,  nor  his  wife,  nor  his  native  State  again. 

In  England  he  at  once  won  powerful  friends,  for  he  had 
just  what  they  most  wanted  at  the  moment, . —  information 
respecting  affairs  in  America.  His  agreeable  manners,  his 
commanding  presence,  his  admirable  talents,  his  heartfelt 
toryism,  all  stood  him  in  good  stead ;  and  he  soon  won  the 
affections  of  the  War  Secretary,  Lord  George  Germaine,  to 
whom  he  made  himself  indispensable.  Under  this  lord,  he 
held  a  lucrative  office,  that  of  Under  Secretary  of  State, 
which  gave  him  charge  of  transporting  supplies  and  raising 
troops, — duties  which  at  that  time  brought  great  profit. 
When  Lord  George  Germaine  was  compelled  to  resign,  he 
provided  handsomely  for  his  factotum,  by  procuring  for  him 
a  commission  as^  Lieutenant-Colonel  in  the  British  army. 

But  he  was  a  lieutenant-colonel  without  a  regiment.  The 
regiment  was  to  be  gathered  in  America  from  the  "  loyal- 
ists." To  America  he  went,  accordingly,  where  he  raised  a 
regiment,  which  he  commanded,  and  which  he  did  not 
scruple  to  lead  against  his  countrymen.  So  lost  was  he  to 
a  sense  of  his  position,  that  he  could  write  of  an  action  in 
which  he  took  part,  in  such  language  as  the  following :  — 


672  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

"  We  had  the  good  fortune  this  morning  to  fall  in  with  a 
chosen  corps,  under  the  command  of  General  Marion  in 
person,  which  we  attacked  and  totally  routed,  killing  a  con- 
siderable number  of  them,  taking  sixteen  prisoners,  and 
driving  General  Marion  and  the  greater  part  of  his  army 
into  the  Santee,  where  it  is  probable  a  great  many  of  them 
perished." 

This  he  calls  "  good  fortune  "  That  native  of  America 
who  could  speak  so  of  the  slaughter  of  some  of  his  country- 
men, and  the  lingering  death  of  others,  must  indeed  have 
had  what  the  phrenologists  call  a  "  defective  organization." 

The  war  ended,  he  returned  to  England,  and  retired  from 
the  army  on  half  pay.  He  was  now  an  English  gentleman 
of  rank,  fortune,  celebrity,  prestige,  and  thirty  years.  What 
more  natural  than  that  such  a  person  should  avail  himself  of 
the  peace  to  make  the  tour  of  Europe  ? 

A  new  chapter  of  his  strange  history  now  opens.  At 
Strasbourg,  one  day,  mounted  upon  a  superb  English 
horse,  and  dressed  in  his  uniform,  he  attended  a  grand 
parade.  Prince  Maximilian,  heir  to  the  throne  of  Bavaria, 
but  then  a  field-marshal  in  the  service  of  France,  commanded 
the  troops  on  that  occasion.  Struck  with  the  fine  appear- 
ance of  Colonel  Thompson,  he  accosted  him,  conversed  with 
him,  was  captivated  by  him,  and  invited  him  to  dinner.  In 
short,  the  Prince  conceived  so  lively  a  regard  for  the  British 
officer,  that  it  ended  in  his  inviting  him  to  enter  the  service 
of  Bavaria,  in  a  capacity  which  gave  him  all  the  power,  at 
once,  of  a  favorite  and  a  prime  minister.  This  office,  how- 
ever, he  could  not  accept  without  the  permission  of  the 
King  of  England.  George  the  Third  not  only  granted  the 
permission,  but  allowed  him  to  retain  his  half  pay,  and 
knighted  him ;  so  that  he  took  up  his  abode  in  Munich,  as 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson.  The  Elector 


BENJAMIN   THOMPSON.  673 

soon  gave  him  the  title  of  Count  Rumford,  by  which  name 
he  has  ever  since  been  known.  It  was  only  in  occasional 
letters  to  his  mother  that  he  had  the  good  sense  to  use  the 
old  familiar  Benjamin.  Plain  Thompson  he  sunk  entirely, 
preferring  always  to  sign  himself  by  the  rather  ridiculous 
name  of  "Rumford."  Such  is  the  weakness  of  the  Tory 
mind ! 

The  glorious  part  of  his  career  now  begins.  He  was  one 
of  the  greatest  benefactors  Bavaria  has  ever  known. 
Armed  with  authority  little  less  than  sovereign,  and  wielding 
the  revenues  of  an  important  state,  he  introduced  into  every 
branch  of  the  public  service  the  most  radical  and  useful 
improvements.  He  reduced  the  excessive  power  of  the 
church ;  he  restored  discipline  and  efficiency  to  the  army ;  he 
established  foundries  and  factories ;  he  drove  the  swarms 
of  beggars  from  the  high  roads  and  streets,  and  gave  them 
profitable  employment;  he  drained  marshes,  and  converted 
them  into  gardens ;  he  turned  waste  places  into  beautiful 
parks  ;  he  founded  schools  ;  he  caused  the  cities  and  towns 
to  be  perfectly  cleansed ;  he  invented  ovens,  kitchens,  laun- 
dries, so  contrived  that  vast  numbers  of  people  would  be 
provided  for  at  the  minimum  of  expense.  In  a  word,  he 
was  a  Yankee,  with  all  a  Yankee's  thrift,  invention,  love  of 
order,  love  of  cleanliness,  dropped  down  into  a  kingdom 
burdened  with  the  accumulated  abuses  of  centuries  ;  and  he 
was  a  Yankee  who  wielded  the  power  of  an  absolute  prince. 
Wealth  and  honors  flowed  in  upon  him.  When  he  was  sick, 
vast  numbers  of  the  poor  went  in  procession  to  church  to 
beseech  Heaven  for  his  recovery,  and  to  this  day  a  monu- 
ment, surmounted  by  a  statue,  standing  in  the  streets  of 
Munich,  attests  the  veneration  in  which  he  was  held. 

Imagine  such  a  man  alighting  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
with  absolute  power,  and  twenty-five  millions  a  year  to 


674  TRIUMPHS   OF  ENTERPRISE. 

spend  in  putting  the  city  in  order !  What  a  bewildering 
thought ! 

When  he  had  worked  for  Bavaria  twenty  years,  the  death 
of  the  elector,  and  the  coming  in  of  a  prince  who  valued  him 
less,  enabled  him  to  transfer  his  beneficent  activity  to  Eng- 
land ;  where  he  erected  a  monument  to  himself  far  more 
honorable,  and,  I  hope,  more  lasting,  than  his  Munich  statue. 
He  founded  the  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  which  employed  Sir 
Humphry  Davy,  and  gave  to  Faraday  the  opportunity  to 
spend  his  life  in  discovering  scientific  truth. 

Some  years  later,  he  contracted  an  unfortunate  marriage 
with  a  brilliant,  wealthy,  French  widow,  which  embittered 
his  closing  years. 

She  was  wholly  a  woman  of  the  drawing-room.  He  was 
an  inventor,  a  philosopher,  and  a  lover  of  order  even  to 
fanaticism.  An  infuriate  "  incompatibility  "  was  rapidly  de- 
veloped. One  of  their  quarrels  he  has  himself  recorded  :  — 

"  A  large  party  had  been  invited  I  neither  liked  nor  approved  of, 
and  invited  for  the  sole1  purpose  of  vexing  me.  Our  house  (near 
Paris)  was  in  the  centre  of  the  garden,  walled  around,  with  iron 
gates.  I  put  on  my  hat,  walked  down  to  the  porter's  lodge,  and 
gave  him  orders,  on  his  peril,  not  to  let  any  one  in.  Besides,  I  took 
away  the  keys.  Madame  went  down,  and  when  the  company  ar- 
rived she  talked  with  them,  —  she  on  one  side,  they  on  the  other, 
of  the  high  brick  wall.  After  that  she  goes  and  pours  boiling  water 
on  some  of  my  beautiful  flowers." 

A  recurrence  of  such  scenes  soon  rendered  the  connection 
insupportable,  and  the  unhappy  pair  had  the  good  sense  to 
separate.  If  we  believe  the  husband,  we  shall  certainly  have 
a  very  bad  opinion  of  this  lady.  In  a  letter  to  his 
American  daughter,  he  calls  her  "the  most  imperious, 
tyrannical,  unfeeling  woman  that  ever  existed";  and  he 


BENJAMIN   THOMPSON.  G75 

speaks  of  her  as  one,  "whose  perseverance  in  pursuing  an 
object  is  equal  to  her  profound  cunning  and  wickedness  in 
framing  it."  Observers  of  life  will  know  how  to  interpret 
these  words.  The  habits  of  both  of  these  people  were 
fixed  before  they  saw  one  another,  and  they  had  passed  the 
period  when  change  is  possible.  Such  incompatibility  is 
the  fault  of  neither  party,  but  the  calamity  of  both.  How 
was  it  possible  that  they  should  agree  ?  She  loved  society  ; 
he  loved  quiet.  He  was  willing  enough  to  spend  money  for 
permanently  improving  or  embellishing  their  abode ;  she 
rejoiced  in  giving  the  most  profuse  entertainments,  happy  to 
live  all  the  week  upon  scraps,  if  she  could  give  a  gorgeous 
banquet  on  Sunday.  Their  house  was  filled  with  Frenchmen 
who  detested  Rumford,  and  whom  he  detested.  He  says,  in 
one  of  his  letters,  that  no  one  can  imagine  the  utter  want  of 
nobleness  in  the  French  character  unless  he  lives  long  in 
France.  It  was  a  happy  day  for  both  when  the  husband 
took  up  his  abode  in  another  mansion  near  Paris,  and  re- 
sumed his  bachelor  life ;  which,  however,  he  alleviated, 
according  to  the  bad  custom  of  the  country,  by  keeping  a 
mistress.  His  wife,  it  appears,  occasionally  visited  him,  and 
he  visited  her ;  so  that  the  separation  was  what  is  called 
"  amicable." 

Rumford  was  a  strange  mixture  of  great  and  little,  of  good 
and  evil.  If  he  abandoned  his  home  and  country,  he  cher- 
ished a  tender  recollection  of  his  mother,  and  provided  gen- 
erously for  the  comfort  of  her  old  age.  His  interest,  too,  in 
the  welfare  of  the  poor  appears  to  have  been  genuine  and 
deep.  In  one  of  his  essays,  we  find  the  following  pas- 
sage :  — 

"  Amongst  the  great  variety  of  enjoyments  which  riches  put 
within  the  reach  of  persons  of  fortune  and  education,  there  is  none 
more  delightful  than  that  which  results  from  doing  good  to  those 


676  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

from  whom  no  return  can  be  expected,  or  none  but  gratitude,  re- 
spect and  attachment.  ...  Is  it  not  possible  to  draw  off  the 
attention  of  the  rich  from  trifling  and  unprofitable  amusements, 
and  engage  them  in  pursuits  in  which  their  own  happiness  and  rep- 
utation, and 'the  public  prosperity,  are  so  intimately  connected? 
.  .  .  What  a  wonderful  change  in  the  state  of  society  might  in  a 
short  time  be  effected  by  their  united  efforts ! " 

No  doubt  his  heart  spoke  in  these  words.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  firmly  convinced  that  the  poor  were  incapable 
of  helping  themselves,  and  can  never  be  raised  from  their 
miserable  condition  except  through  the  generosity  of  the  rich. 
He  approved  the  social  arrangements  existing  in  the  Old 
World.  ,He  thought  China  the  nearest  approach  to  a  perfect 
state,  because  there  the  principle  of  ORDER  was  developed 
to  the  uttermost ;  and,  for  the  same  reason,  he  approved 
American  slavery.  Such  minds  as  his  can  form  no  concep- 
tion of  a  state  of  things,  like  that  which  exists  in  the  best 
portions  of  the  United  States,  where  no  class  depends  upon 
another  for  its  welfare  and  happiness,  but  all  classes  are 
equally  dependent  and  equally  independent. 

This  extraordinary  man  died  in  1814,  at  Auteuil,  near 
Paris,  where  he  was  buried,  and  a  handsome  monument  cov- 
ers his  remains.  His  daughter,  Sarah,  who  inherited  his 
title,  spent  most  of  her  days  in  New  England,  where  she  was 
called  the  "  Countess  of  Rumford."  One  of  his  illegitimate 
sons,  born  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  entered  the  French 
army  as  an  officer,  won  distinction  in  the  service,  and  fell 
before  Sebastopol  during  the  Crimean  war.  A  son  of  this 
officer  is  still  living  in  Paris,  to  whom  the  fr  Countess  of 
Rumford  "  left  a  portion  of  her  fortune. 

To  Harvard  College  he  left,  first,  a  thousand  dollars  a 
year;  secondly,  his  daughter's  annuity  after  her  death,  of 
four  hundred  dollars  a  year ;  and,  thirdly,  his  whole  estate 


X 


BENJAMIN   THOMPSON.  677 

after  the  decease  of  persons  dependent  upon  its  income.  The 
object  of  this  handsome  bequest  was  to  endow  a  professorship 
for  the  promotion  of  physical  and  mathematical  science. 
He  bequeathed  to  the  government  of  the  United  States  all 
that  part  of  his  library  which  related  to  military  subjects,  as 
well  as  all  his  military  plans  and  designs,  for  the  use- of  the 
Military  Academy  at  West  Point.  In  accordance  with  his 
bequest  to  Harvard  College,  the  Rumford  Professorship  of 
Science  was  founded  in  1816,  and  the  first  person  who  held 
the  appointment  was  Dr.  Jacob  Bigelow,  an  eminent  physi- 
cian and  man  of  science. 

Count  Rumford,  in  his  lifetime,  presented  five  thousand 
dollars  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  an 
endowment  which  has  increased,  in  the  course  of  years,  to 
more  than  six  times  that  amount.  Under  the  auspices  of  this 
institution  a  complete  edition  of  the  works  of  Count  Rum- 
ford,  in  four  handsome  volumes,  has  been  recently  published. 
Fifty  years  ago,  his  essays  and  papers,  philanthropic  and 
philosophical,  were  highly  esteemed,  ran  through  many 
editions,  and  were  translated  into  several  languages.  A 
superb  biography  has  recently  been  written  by  a  distin- 
guished member  of  the  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  the 
Rev.  George  E.  Ellis,  of  Boston.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
important  books  of  the  year,  and  secures  to  posterity  a 
knowledge  of  Count  Rumford's  extraordinary  character  and 
unique  career. 


CHARLES  DICKENS  AS  A  CITIZEN. 


To  most  of  us,  the  prospect  of  being  obliged  to  make  a 
speech  is  simply  terrible.  This  appears  to  be  particularly 
the  case  with  literary  men,  who  are  apt  to  be  shy  and  sen- 
sitive, and  whose  success  in  one  kind  of  utterance,  they 
think,  imposes  upon  them  a  kind  of  obligation  not  to  fail  in 
another. 

Every  one  remembers  the  woful  plight  into  which  the 
poet  Cowper  was  thrown  when  his  friends  procured  for  him 
a  lucrative  office  for  life,  which  would  oblige  him  to  read 
aloud  occasionally  in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  was  so  com- 
pletely panic-stricken,  that  his  reason  at  length  gave  way ; 
and,  after  he  had  twice  attempted  to  commit  suicide,  his 
family  consented  to  his  resigning  the  place.  Washington 
Irving,  as  we  all  know,  had  a  mortal  dread  of  addressing  an 
assembly, —  and,  on  one  celebrated  occasion,  broke  down  and 
took  his  seat  in  confusion.  Hawthorne,  too ,  was  a  coward  before 
an  audience,  and  it  cost  him  a  great  effort,  when  he  was  Con- 
sul at  Liverpool,  to  say  a  few  words  after  dinner  in  acknowl- 
edgment of  a  toast  complimenting  his  country.  Thackeray 
was  little  more  of  a  speech-maker  than  Hawthorne.  He  used 
to  suffer  extremely  when  he  had  engaged  to  preside  at  a  meet- 
ing, or  reply  to  a  sentiment.  I  remember,  also,  the  remark- 
able case  of  the  strong  man  of  New  England,  Dr.  Winship, 
who  declares  that  he  lost  seven  pounds  of  flesh  during  the 
week  or  two  preceding  the  delivery  of  his  first  lecture ;  and 

43 


G80  TRIUMPHS   OF   ENTERPRISE. 

when  at  length  he  came  trembling  before  the  audience,  and 
had  uttered  a  few  words,  the  lights  swam  before  his  eyes, 
he  fell  to  the  floor,  and  was  carried  out  in  a  dead  faint. 

Notwithstanding  this  natural  repugnance  to  public  speak- 
ing, I  think  that  every  citizen  of  a  free  country  ought  to 
endeavor  to  overcome  it.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  a  real 
cowardice,  which  we  ought  not  to  permit  to  ourselves,  any 
more  than  a  boy  ought  to  stay  out  of  the  water,  because  the 
first  plunge  is  chill  and  disagreeable.  Surely  we  ought  to 
expect  from  every  educated  person,  that  he  should  be  able 
to  get  upon  his  legs,  look  his  fellow-beings  in  the  face,  and 
utter  to  them  freely  and  calmly  his  thoughts,  if  he  has  any, 
upon  subjects  of  common '  interest.  That  this  accomplish- 
ment is  somewhat  more  common  in  the  United  States  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  world,  is  a  fact  upon  which  we  should 
congratulate  ourselves. 

Charles  Dickens  was  so  constituted  that  he  never  expe- 
rienced the  slightest  embarrassment  in  making  a  speech. 
When  he  was  last  in  the  United  States,  he  told  a  friend  that 
the  first  time  he  had  ever  addressed  an  audience,  he  was  as 
composed  in  mind  as  though  he  were  talking  to  his  own 
family,  and  that  every  speech  he  had  ever  delivered  was 
extemporaneous.  He  said  that  when  he  was  going  to  speak 
in  the  evening,  he  was  accustomed  to  take  a  walk  by  him- 
self, and  arrange  the  outline  of  what  he  wished  to  say,  and 
after  fixing  the  leading  thoughts  well  in  his  mind,  dismiss  the 
subject  until  he  rose  to  speak. 

All  those  fifty-six  speeches,  therefore,  which  have  been 
recently  published  in  a  volume,  were  in  some  degree  the 
unstudied  expression  of  his  nature.  Many  of  them,  indeed, 
were  uttered  without  a  moment's  preparation,  since  they 
were  suggested  by  occurrences  which  could  not  be  antici- 
pated. In  delivering  the  prizes  one  evening  to  the  pupils 


CHARLES   DICKENS   AS   A   CITIZEN.  681 

of  the  Birmingham  Institute,  he  had  to  bestow  one  of  the 
medals  upon  a  Miss  Winkle, —  a  name  which  was,  of  course, 
received  by  the  audience  with  laughter,  as  it  reminded  them 
of  Mr.  Pickwick's  sporting  friend.  The  young  lady  herself 
joining  in  the  merriment,  Mr.  Dickens  pretended  to  whisper 
a  few  words  in  her  ear,  and  then,  turning  to  the  audience, 
said :  — 

WI  have  recommended  Miss  Winkle  to  change  her 
name." 

In  this  happy  way  he  availed  himself  of  every  incident  of 
festive  occasion.  No  one,  I  presume,  ever  carried  the  art  of 
presiding  at  a  public  dinner  nearer  perfection  than  he.  There 
was  such  a  blending  of  dignity  and  ease  in  his  demeanor, 
and  such  a  union  of  airy  humor  and  weighty  thought  in  his 
discourse,  that  no  one  could  tell,  at  the  close  of  the  repast, 
whether  he  had  been  more  amused  than  impressed,  or  more 
impressed  than  amused,  although  sure  that  he  had  never 
been  so  much  amused  or  so  much  impressed  in  his  life 
before. 

These  speeches  are  perhaps,  upon  the  whole,  the  most 
Dickensy  of  his  works,  and  they  certainly  do  present  him  to 
us  in  a  most  captivating  light.  They  show  him  to  us  as  a 
man  who,  although  himself  powerful  and  famous,  yet  had  a 
peculiar  and  strong  sympathy  with  the  weak  and  the 
defeated.  For  example,  in  that  very  Birmingham  speech,  to 
which  allusion  has  just  been  made,  he  did  not  omit  to  say  a 
few  consoling  words  to  those  who  had  striven  for  the  prizes, 
but  striven  in  vain.  He  remarked  that  the  prize-takers 
were  not  the  only  successful  pupils,  but  merely  -the  most 
successful. 

"  To  strive  at  all,"  said  he,  "  involves  a  victory  achieved 
over  sloth,  inertness,  and  indifference.  .  .  Therefore, 
every  losing  competitor  among  my  hearers  may  be  certain 


682  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

that  he  has  still  won  much  —  very  much  —  and  that  he  can 
well  afford  to  swell  the  triumph  of  his  rivals  who  have 
passed  him  in  the  race." 

It  was  also  graceful  in  him,  in  presiding  at  a  meeting  of 
proof-readers,  to  acknowledge  that  he  had  never  gone  over 
the  sheets  of  any  of  his  works  without  having  a  proof-reader 
point  out  to  him  "  something  that  he  had  overlooked,  some 
slight  inconsistency  into  which  he  had  fallen,  some  little 
lapse  he  had  made";  showing  that  he  had  been  closely 
followed  w  by  a  patient  and  trained  mind,  and  not  merely  by 
a  skilful  eye." 

At  the  same  time  he  was,  if  we  may  judge  by  his  speeches, 
wholly  free  from  jealousy  of  authors  who  might  be  supposed 
to  be  his  rivals.  The  only  two  men  in  England  whom  any 
one  could  regard  in  that  light,  during  his  lifetime,  were 
Thackeray  and  Bulwer,  but  he  seems  to  have  had  for  both  a 
genuine  admiration. 

"  I  am  sure,"  said  Mr.  Dickens,  at  a  dinner  of  the  Theat- 
rical Fund,  at  which  Thackeray  presided,  "  I  am  sure  that 
this  institution  never  has  had,  and  that  it  never  will  have, 
simply  because  it  cannot  have,  a  greater  lustre  cast  upon  it 
than  by  the  presence  of  the  noble  English  writer  who  fills 
the  chair  to-night." 

On  more  than  one  occasion,  he  paid  equal  homage  to  the 
genius  of  Lord  Lytton,  Thomas  Hood,  Douglas  Jerrold, 
Thomas  Carlyle,  and  Henry  Thomas  Buckle. 

Dickens  shows  himself  a  modest  man  in  these  speeches, 
inasmuch  as  he  ever  attributes  whatever  success  he  may 
have  had  in  literature  to  hard  work.  I  would  like  to  have 
the  following  passage  put  up  conspicuously  in  every  school 
and  college  on  the  globe  :  — 

"  The  one  serviceable,  safe,  certain,  remunerative,  attainable 
quality,  in  every  study  and  in  every  pursuit,  is  the  quality  of 


CHAELES   DICKENS  AS  A  CITIZEN.  683 

ATTENTION.  My  own  invention  or  imagination,  such  as  it  is,  I  can 
most  truthfully  assure  you,  would  never  have  served  me  as  it  has, 
but  for  the  habit  of  commonplace,  humble,  patient,  daily,  toiling, 
drudging  attention.  Genius,  vivacity,  quickness  of  penetration, 
brilliancy  in  association  of  ideas,  —  such  mental  qualities  will  not 
be  commanded ;  but  attention,  after  a  due  term  of  submissive  ser- 
vice, always  will.  Like  certain  plants  which  the  poorest  peasant 
may  grow  in  the  poorest  soil,  it  can  be  cultivated  by  any  one,  and 
it  is  certain,  in  its  own  good  season,  to  bring  forth  flowers  and 
fruit/' 

Many  times  he  recurs  to  the  same  idea.  He  seems  to 
take  pleasure,  also,  in  sharing  the  glory  of  his  works  with 
his  readers.  "  Your  earnestness,"  he  once  said,  "has  stimu- 
lated mine,  your  laughter  has  made  me  laugh,  and  your 
tears  have  overflowed  my  eyes  "  ;  and  he  again  added,  that 
he  claimed  nothing  for  himself  but  "  constant  fidelity  to  hard 
work" 

For  so  amiable  a  man,  he  was  singularly  free  from  every- 
thing mawkish  and  weakly  sentimental.  Like  every  other 
person  of  good  feeling,  he  regarded  war  with  horror ;  but 
he  knew  well,  as  he  once  eloquently  said,  that  there  are 
times  "when  the  evils  of  peace,  though  not  so  acutely  felt, 
are  immeasurably  greater  than  the  evils  of  war."  We  might 
almost  suppose  him  speaking  with  a  mind  prophetic  of  these 
very  days,  when  he  gave  one  example  of  a  peace  more  terri- 
ble than  war.  It  was  when  "a  powerful  nation,  by  admit- 
ting the  right  of  any  autocrat  to  do  wrong,  sows,  by  such 
complicity,  the  seeds  of  its  own  ruin." 

The  same  hearty,  robust  sense  dictated  his  frequent 
remark,  that  sanitary  reform  must  precede  all  other  social 
remedies,  and  that  neither  education  nor  religion  can  do 
anything  permanently  useful  until  the  way  has  been  paved 
for  their  ministrations  by  cleanliness  and  decency. 

He  always  stands  by  the  age  in  which  he  had  the  happi- 


684  TRIUMPHS    OF   ENTERPRISE. 

ness  to  live.  There  is  an  excellent  passage,  too  long  for 
quotation,  in  which  he  defends  the  present  time  against  the 
common  charge  of  its  being  "  a  material  age."  He  wishes 
to  know  whether  electricity  has  become  more  material,  in 
any  sane  mind,  because  of  the  blessed  discovery  that  it 
could  be  employed  for  the  service  of  man,  to  an  immeasura- 
bly greater  extent  than  for  his  destruction.  He  desires  also 
to  be  informed  whether  he  makes  a  more  material  journey 
to  the  bedside  of  a  dying  parent,  when  he  travels  thither 
sixty  miles  an  hour,  than  when  he  jogs  along  at  six. 

"Rather,"  he  adds,  "in  the  swiftest  case,  does  not  my 
agonized  heart  become  over-fraught  with  gratitude  to  that 
Supreme  Beneficence  from  which  alone  could  have  proceeded 
the  wonderful  means  of  shortening  my  suspense  ?  " 

He  goes  on  to  say,  with  excellent  truth  and  point,  that 
the  true  material  age  is  "  the  stupid  Chinese  age,  in  which 
no  new  or  grand  revelations  of  nature  are  granted,  because 
they  are  ignorantly  and  insolently  repelled,  instead  of  being 
diligently  and  humbly  sought." 

I  am  tempted  to  append  to  these  observations  a  passage 
from  his  celebrated  Manchester  speech  of  1858,  before  the 
distribution  of  the  prizes  awarded  by  the  Institutional  As- 
sociation of  Lancashire  and  Cheshire.  It  may  serve  as  a 
specimen  of  his  manner,  and  an  evidence  of  his  worth  as 
a  citizen. 

"I  have  looked,"  said  he,  "over  a  few  of  those  examina- 
tion-papers, which  have  comprised  history,  geography,  gram- 
mar, arithmetic,  book-keeping,  decimal  coinage,  mensura- 
tion, mathematics,  social  economy,  the  French  language,  — 
in  fact,  they  comprise  all  the  keys  that  open  all  the  locks  of 
knowledge.  I  felt  most  devoutly  gratified,  as  to  many  of 
them,  that  they  had  not  been  submitted  to  me  to  answer,  for 
I  am  perfectly  sure  that  if  they  had  been,  I  should  have  had 


CHARLES  DICKENS  AS  A  CITIZEN.  685 

mighty  little  to  bestow  upon  myself  to-night.  And  yet  it  is 
always  to  be  observed,  and  seriously  remembered,  that  these 
examinations  are  undergone  by  people  whose  lives  have  been 
passed  in  a  continual  fight  for  bread,  and  whose  whole  exist- 
ence has  been  a  constant  wrestle  with 

4  Those  twin  jailors  of  the  daring  heart,  — 
Low  birth  and  iron  fortune/  * 

"I  could  not  but  consider,  with  extraordinary  admiration, 
that  these  questions  have  been  replied  to,  not  by  men  like 
myself,  the  business  of  whose  life  is  with  writing  and  with 
books,  but  by  men,  the  business  of  whose  life  is  with  tools 
and  with  machinery. 

"  Let  me  endeavor  to  recall,  as  well  as  my  memory  will  serve 
me,  from  among  the  most  interesting  cases  of  prize-holders 
and  certificate-gainers  who  will  appear  before  you,  some  two 
or  three  of  the  most  conspicuous  examples.  There  are  two 
poor  brothers  from  near  Chorley,  who  work  from  morning 
to  night  in  a  coal-pit,  and  who,  in  all  weathers,  have  walked 
eight  miles  a  night,  three  nights  a  week,  to  attend  the  classes 
in  which  they  have  gained  distinction.  There  are  two  poor 
boys  from  Bollington,  who  began  life  as  piecers  at  one  shil- 
ling or  eighteenpence  a  week,  and  the  father  of  one  of  whom 
was  cut  to  pieces  by  the  machinery  at  which  he  worked,  but 
not  before  he  had  himself  founded  the  institution  in  which 
this  son  has  since  come  to  be  taught.  These  two  poor  boys 
will  appear  before  you  to-night,  to  take  the  second-class 
prize  in  chemistry  There  is  a  plasterer  from  Bury,  sixteen 
years  of  age,  who  took  a  third-class  certificate  last  year  at 
the  hands  of  Lord  Brougham ;  he  is  this  year  again  success- 
ful in  a  competition  three  times  as  severe.  There  is  a 
Wagon-maker  from  the  same  place,  who  knew  little  or  abso- 
lutely nothing  until  he  was  a  grown  man,  and  who  has 

*  Claude  Melnotte,  in  "  The  Lady  of  Lyons,"  Act  III.  Scene  2. 


686  TRIUMPHS    OP   ENTERPRISE. 

learned  all  he  knows,  which  is  a  great  deal,  in  the  local  insti- 
tution. There  is  a  chain-maker,  in  very  humble  circum- 
stances, and  working  hard  all  day,  who  walks  six  miles  n 
night,  three  nights  a  week,  to  attend  the  classes  in  which  he 
has  won  so  famous  a  place.  There  is  a  moulder  in  an  iron 
foundry,  who,  whilst  he  was  working  twelve  hours  a  day 
before  the  furnace,  got  up  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  to 
learn  drawing.  'The  thought  of  my  lads/  he  writes  in  his 
modest  account  ot  himself,  '  in  their  peaceful  slumbers  above 
me,  gave  me  fresh  courage,  and  I  used  to  think  that  if  I 
should  never  receive  any  personal  benefit,  I  might  instruct 
them  when  they  came  to  be  of  an  age  to  understand  the  mighty 
machines  and  engines  which  have  made  our  country,  Eng- 
land, pre-eminent  in  the  world's  history.'  There  is  a  piecer 
at  mule-frames,  who  could  not  read  at  eighteen,  who  is  now 
a  man  of  little  more  than  thirty,  who  is  the  sole  support  of 
an  aged  mother,  who  is  arithmetical  teacher  in  the  institution 
in  which  he  himself  was  taught,  who  writes  of  himself  that 
he  made  the  resolution  never  to  take  up  a  subject  without 
keeping  to  it,  and  who  has  kept  to  it  with  such  an  astonish- 
ing will,  that  he  is  now  well  versed  in  Euclid  and  Algebra, 
and  is  the  best  French  scholar  in  Stockport.  The  drawing- 
classes  in  that  same  Stockport  are  taught  by  a  working 
blacksmith ;  and  the  pupil  of  that  working  blacksmith  will 
receive  the  highest  honors  of  to-night  Well  may  it  be  said 
of  that  good  blacksmith,  as  it  was  written  of  another  of  his 
trade,  by  the  American  poet :  — 

*  Toiling,  rejoicing,  sorrowing, 

Onward  through  life  he  goes  ; 
Each  morning  sees  some  task  begun, 

Each  evening  sees  its  close. 
Something  attempted,  something  done. 

Has  earned  a  night's  repose.' 


CHARLES    DICKENS   AS   A   CITIZEN.  687 

w  To  pass  from  the  successful  candidates  to  the  delegates 
from  local  societies  now  before  me,  and  to  content  myself 
with  one  instance  from  amongst  them,  —  there  is  among 
their  number  a  most  remarkable  man,  whose  history  I  have 
read  with  feelings  that  I  could  not  adequately  express  under 
any  circumstances,  and  least  of  all  when  I  know  he  hears 
me,  who  worked  when  he  was  a  mere  baby  at  hand-loom 
weaving  until  he  dropped  from  fatigue ;  who  began  to  teach 
himself  as  soon  as  he  could  earn  five  shillings  a  week ;  who 
is  now  a  botanist,  acquainted  with  every  production  of  the 
Lancashire  valley ;  who  is  a  naturalist,  aud  has  made  and 
preserved  a  collection  of  the  eggs  of  British  birds,  and 
stuifed  the  birds ;  who  is  now  a  conchologist,  with  a  very 
curious,  and,  in  some  respects,  an  original  collection  of  fresh- 
water shells,  and  has  also  preserved  and  collected  the  mosses 
of  fresh  water  and  of  the 'sea;  who  is  worthily  the  president 
of  his  own  local  Literary  Institution,  and  who  was  at  his 
work  this  time  last  night  as  foreman  in  a  mill 

w  So  stimulating  has  been  the  influence  of  these  bright 
examples,  and  many  more,  that  I  notice  among  the  applica- 
tions from  Blackburn  for  preliminary  test  examination-papers, 
one  from  an  applicant  who  gravely  fills  up  the  printed  form 
by  describing  himself  as  ten  years  of  age,  and  who,  with 
equal  gravity,  describes  his  occupation  as  "  nursing  a  little 
child."  Nor  are  these  things  confined  to  the  men.  The 
women  employed  in  factories,  milliners'  work,  and  domestic 
service,  have  begun  to  show,  as  it  is  fitting  they  should,  a 
most  decided  determination  not  to  be  outdone  by  the  men  ; 
and  the  women  of  Preston  in  particular  have  so  honorably 
distinguished  themselves,  and  shown  in  their  examination- 
papers  such  an  admirable  knowledge  of  the  science  of  house- 
hold management  and  household  economy,  that  if  I  were  a 
working  bachelor  of  Lancashire  or  Cheshire,  and  if  I  had 


688  TRIUMPHS   OP  ENTERPRISE. 

not  cast  my  eye  or  set  my  heart  upon  any  lass  in  particular, 
I  should  positively  get  up  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
with  the  determination  of  the  iron-moulder  himself,  and 
should  go  to  Preston  in  search  of  a  wife." 

How  admirable  is  this  !  Mr.  Dickens  concluded  with  the 
following  remark  :  "  Lastly,  let  me  say  one  word  out  of  my 
own  personal  heart,  which  is  always  very  near  to  it  in  this 
connection.  Do  not  let  us,  in  the  midst  of  the  visible  objects 
of  nature,  whose  Avorkings  we  can  tell  in  figures,  surrounded 
by  machines  that  can  be  made  to  the  thousandth  part  of  an 
inch,  acquiring  every  day  knowledge  which  can  be  proved 
upon  a  slate  or  demonstrated  by  a  microscope,  — do  not  let 
us,  in  the  laudable  pursuit  of  the  facts  that  surround  us,  neg- 
lect the  fancy  and  the  imagination  which  equally  surround  us 
as  a  part  of  the  great  scheme.  Let  the  child  have  its  fables  , 
let  the  man  or  woman  into  which  it  changes,  always  remem- 
ber those  fables  tenderly;  let  numerous  graces  and  orna- 
ments that  can  not  be  weighed  and  measured,  and  that  seem 
at  first  sight  idle  enough,  continue  to  have  their  places  about 
us,  be  we  never  so  wise.  The  hardest  head  may  coexist 
with  the  softest  heart.  The  union  and  just  balance  of  those 
two  is  always  a  blessing  to  the  possessor,  and  always  a  bless- 
ing to  mankind.  The  Divine  Teacher  was  as  gentle  and  con- 
siderate as  he  was  powerful  and  wise.  You  all  know  how 
He  could  still  the  raging  of  the  sea,  and  could  hush  a  little 
child.  As  the  utmost  results  of  the  wisdom  of  men  can 
only  be  at  last  to  help  to  raise  this  earth  to  that  condition  to 
which  His  doctrine,  untainted  by  the  blindnesses  and  passions 
of  men,  would  have  exalted  it  long  ago ;  so  let  us  always 
remember  that  He  set  us  the  example  of  blending  the  under- 
standing and  the  imagination,  and  that,  following  it  ourselves, 
we  tread  in  His  steps,  and  help  our  race  on  to  its  better  and 
host  days.  Knowledge,  as  all  followers  of  it  must  know, 


CHARLES   DICKENS    AS    A    CITIZEN.  689 

has  a  very  limited  power  indeed,  when  it  informs  the  head 
alone  ;  but  when  it  informs  the  head  and  heart  too,  it  has  a 
power  over  life  and  death,  the  body  and  the  soul,  .and  domi- 
nates the  universe." 

The  perusal  of  these  speeches,  when  some  day  a  well- 
edited  edition  of  them  shall  be  published,  with  due  explana- 
tions of  the  circumstances  in  which  they  were  delivered,  will 
probably  enhance  the  public  estimate  both  of  his  genius  and 
of  his  worth.  The  reader  will  observe,  with  pleasure,  that 
most  of  them  were  delivered  for  the  benefit  of  charitable 
funds  and  working  men's  lyceums.  He  could  not  but  know 
that  the  success  of  a  public  dinner  or  of  a  public  meeting  was 
secure,  if  only  the  managers  could  print  the  magic  words  : 
"  Charles  Dickens  will  preside."  It  was  a  matter  of  principle 
with  him  not  to  refuse  such  a  request  when  it  was  made  on 
behalf  of  an  institution  which  he  approved.  He  presided 
several  times  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  London  newspaper 
carriers,  and  he  frequently  performed  the  same  office  for  the 
benefit  of  circus  riders  and  poor  actors,  —  a  class  whom  he 
delighted  to  defend  against  their  calumniators.  By  making 
this  noble  use  of  his  great  powers  and  his  great  fame,  he  not 
only  put  many  thousands  of  pounds  into  the  treasury  of  use- 
ful charities,  but  he  assisted  to  rescue  from  failure,  and  to 
place  upon  a  solid  footing,  the  working  men's  lyceum  system 
of  England. 

Like  all  the  rest  of  the  sons  of  men,  he  had  his  faults  and 
his  limits.  He  was  more  a  microscope  than  a  telescope.  He 
knew  the  by-ways  of  London  better  than  he  could  ever  have 
known  the  solar  system.  He  could  better  inspire  benevolent 
feeling  than  suggest  practical  measures.  But  when  the 
whole  story  of  his  public  and  private  life  has  been  told,  we 
shall  probably  all  be  persuaded  that  this  beloved  author  was 
not  less  excellent  as  a  man  and  citizen,  than  admirable  as  a 
genius. 


A  PRECIOUS    TREASURE. 


THE 


HOME  OF  WASHINGTON ; 


OB, 


&  iFl  gf 

Jjount   jjtrnon  and  its    psodattoni 

^n  jT  *~i 

BY  BENSON  J.  LOSSING, 

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Copies  of  Famous  Pictures,  Portraits  of  Washington 
and  other  Members  of  the  Family,  as 
well  as  the  Distinguished  Per- 
sonages of  his  Time,  etc. 


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